.      LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

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http://www.archive.org/details/183l1906celebrat00weslrich 


SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 


CO 

to 

00 


1831-1906 
CELEBRATION 

OF    THE 

SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

OF  THE  FOUNDING  OF 
WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY 


Wesleyan  University 
Middletown,  Conn. 

1907 


190  ft 


Copyrighted,  1907,  by 
'  k  V*  ►^  ~  Wesleyan  University. 


THE   TUTTLE,   MOREHOUSE   &   TAYLOR   COMPANY. 


Introduction  :  ^"^^^ 

Preliminary 3 

Programme  of  Commencement  Week        .        ...        5 
The  Celebration 7 

Sunday  Mornings  June  24. 
Baccalaureate  Sermon: 

President  Bradford  Paul  Raymond  .        .        .        .19 

Sunday  Evening. 
Address  : 

Professor  William  North  Rice        .        .        .        .31 

Tuesday  Afternoon,  June  26. 
Commencement  Luncheon 55 

Addresses  : 

Professor  Caleb  Thomas  Winchester       .        .      55 

Bishop  Cyrus  David  Koss 60 

Judge  Arthur  Eugene  Sutherland  ...  65 
Reverend  Daniel  Dorchester,  Jr.  .  .  .68 
Professor  Charles  Hubbard  Judd  ...  74 
Professor  Charles  Macau  lay  Stuart       .        .      78 

Tuesday  Evening. 
Address  : 

Honorable  Martin  Augustine  Knapp      ...      87 

Wednesday,  June  2^. 
Commencement. 

Addresses  : 

Stephen  Henry  Olin  .        .        .        .        .     109 

President  Herbert  Welch  .        .        .        .117 


iv  CONTENTS 

Appendix  I: 

Committees 133 

Circulars,  Announcements 137 

List  of  Visitors  : 

Specially  Invited  Guests 143 

Alumni 145 

Trustees  and  Faculty  of  Wesleyan  University  : 

Board  of  Trustees 155 

Faculty 160 

Degrees  Conferred 165 

Appendix  II: 

WiLLBUR  FiSK  Hall 175 

Dedication  of  the  John  Bell  Scott  Memorial        .     179 

Addresses  : 

Professor  Edward  Bennett  Rosa  .  .182 
Henry  C.  M.  Ingraham  ....  201 
President  Bradford  Paul  Raymond    .        .    207 

New  North  College  : 
Address  : 

President  Bradford  Paul  Raymond     .        .213 


MlnjstxntmnB 

Views  of  Wesleyan  University:  Facing  page 

Wesleyan  University,  about  1853  .         .       Frontispiece 

Old  North  College 34 

Old  Laboratory 40 

Wesleyan  University,  1831 46 

American    Literary,    Scientific    and    Military 

Academy no 

WiLLBUR  FiSK  Hall 175 

John  Bell  Scott  Memorial 179 

New  North  College        .        .        .        .        .        .213 

View  of  Middletown,  1852 7 

Faculty : 

In  1869 14 

In  1872 57 

In  1875 yy 

In  1879 81 

In  1888       .        .        . 128 

In  1906 160 

Portraits : 

Laban  Clark i 

Bradford  Paul  Raymond 19 

William  North  Rice 31 

WiLLBUR  FiSK -33 

John  Johnston 49 

Augustus  William  Smith 52 

Cyrus  David  Foss      .        .   '     .        .        .        .        .  60 

Stephen  Olin 62 

Nathan  Bangs 64 

Joseph  Cummings 70 

John  Wesley  Beach 73 

Martin  Augustine  Knapp 87 

Stephen  Henry  Olin 109 

President  Herbert  Welch        .         .         .         .        .117 


LABAN    CLARK 


INTRODUCTION 


THE  first  definite  action  looking  to  a  celebration  of  the 
Seventy-fifth  Anniversary  of  the  founding  of  Wesleyan 
University  was  taken  by  the  Faculty  on  November  i6,  1904, 
when  a  committee  was  appointed  to  consider  the  advisability  of 
holding  such  a  celebration  at  the  Commencement  of  1906.  On 
January  11,  1905,  the  Faculty  approved  the  recommendation  of 
this  committee  that  no  elaborate  ceremonies  be  held,  but  that 
the  regular  exercises  of  Commencement  week  be  modified  so 
as  to  include  features  commemorative  of  the  occasion.  Another 
committee,  including  some  of  the  members  of  the  former  com- 
mittee, was  appointed  to  make  a  preliminary  report  to  the  Faculty 
in  time  for  action  before  the  mid-year  meeting  of  the  Board  of 
Trustees. 

The  report  of  this  second  committee,  approved  by  the  Faculty 
on  March  2.J,  1905,  requested  the  Board  of  Trustees  to  authorize 
the  appointment  of  a  joint  committee  of  nine,  to  consist  of  three 
Trustees,  three  members  of  the  Faculty,  and  three  alumni,  with 
power  to  make  arrangements  for  the  proper  celebration  of  the 
seventy-fifth  anniversary  of  the  founding  of  the  University. 

Finally,  at  a  meeting  of  the  Board  of  Trustees,  held  March  30, 
1905,  the  appointment  of  such  a  joint  committee  was  authorized 
and  the  Trustee  members  were  appointed.  The  joint  committee, 
as  finally  appointed,  consisted  of  the  following  persons : 

Bradford  P.  Raymond, 

Charles  L.  Rockwell,  \  for  the  Trustees. 

Edmund  M.  Mills, 

Morris  B.  Crawford, 

Herbert  W.  Conn,  y  for  the  Faculty. 

William  J.  James, 

John  C.  Clark, 

Waters  B.  Day,  y  for  the  Alumni. 

Walter  B.  Wilson, 

3 


6  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

lo  :oo  A.  M.     Business  Meeting  of  the  Alumni  Association. 
12:30  p.  M.     Luncheon     for    Alumni    and    Guests    of    the 
University.     Toast-Master,    Professor    Caleb 
Thomas  Winchester,  L.H.D. 
3:30  p.  M.     Championship    Baseball    Game:     WilHams    vs. 

Wesley  an. 
5:00  to  7:00  p.  M.  Receptions  by  the  College  Fraternities. 
8:15  p.  M.  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Oration,  "Transportation  and 
Combination,"  by  Martin  Augustine  Knapp, 
LL.D.,  Chairman  of  the  United  States  Inter- 
state Commerce  Commission. 

Wednesday,  June  27. 

10:30  A.  M.     Addresses  by  Stephen  Henry  Olin,  LL.D.,  and 
Rev.  Herbert  Welch,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  President 
of  Ohio  Wesleyan  Uinversity. 
Conferring  of  Degrees. 


J    °2 

Q        ^ 

a 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY 


THE  call  of  Alma  Mater  to  celebrate  the  seventy-fifth  anni- 
versary of  the  founding  of  Wesleyan  University  drew  five 
hundred  alumni  and  many  other  friends  of  the  institution  to 
Middletown  for  the  exercises  of  Commencement  week,  1906. 
As  in  1903,  the  task  of  the  Committee  on  Entertainment  was 
materially  lightened  by  the  hospitality  of  the  citizens  of  Middle- 
town,  who  opened  their  houses  for  the  accommodation  of  visi- 
tors. Following  the  custom  of  recent  years,  visitors  arrived 
early,  and  the  annual  Glee  Club  Concert  on  the  evening  of  Satur- 
day, June  23,  was  attended  by  an  audience  which  crowded  the 
Middlesex  Opera  House.  One  of  the  attractive  features  of  the 
concert  was  the  appearance  in  nearly  full  numbers  of  the  *88 
Glee  Club. 

The  Baccalaureate  sermon  by  President  Raymond  was  the 
first  of  the  exercises  of  Commencement  week.  It  was  delivered 
in  the  Methodist  Church.  At  10.30  a.  m.  the  Faculty  and  grad- 
uating class,  in  academic  costume,  entered  the  church  in  pro- 
cession. The  music  was  furnished  by  the  Glee  Club,  with 
Professor  Karl  P.  Harrington  at  the  organ.  The  sermon,  with 
all  the  addresses  of  the  week,  is  printed  at  length  in  the  second 
section  of  this  volume. 

In  the  evening  the  Methodist  Church  was  again  filled  with  an 
attentive  audience.  Professor  William  North  Rice  delivered  an 
elaborate  and  inspiring  address  on  "The  History  and  Work  of 
Wesleyan  University." 

The  closing  chapel  exercises  of  the  college  year  brought 
together  in  Memorial  Chapel  on  Monday  morning  a  large  audi- 
ence of  undergraduates  and  their  friends,  as  well  as  of  alumni. 
At  the  close  of  the  customary  exercises  Rev.  Benjamin  Gill, 
D.D.,  of  the  Class  of  1870,  was  introduced.  After  a  felicitous 
speech,  abounding  in  reminiscences  of  college  days  and  full 
of  humor,  he  announced  the  results  of  the  prize  contests  of  the 
year. 

Following  the  Class  Day  exercises  on  Monday  afternoon  came 
one  of  the  innovations  of  the  programme.  The  President's 
reception  was  held  in  the  late  afternoon  in  his  new  home  and  in 


8  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

the  spacious  grounds  surrounding  it.  The  change  in  time  from 
Wednesday  evening  contributed  greatly  to  making  it  a  popular 
success. 

The  second  innovation  was  the  holding  of  class  reunions  on 
Monday  from  6  to  9  p.  m.  Of  the  forty-five  classes  graduated 
from  1861  to  1905,  thirty-four  held  reunions,  twelve  being 
accommodated  in  the  John  Bell  Scott  Memorial  and  served  by 
the  same  caterer.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  never  have  so  many 
classes  held  successful  reunions.  A  general  demand  for  the 
continuation  of  the  arrangement  was  expressed  by  the  alumni. 

At  9  p.  M.  began  the  Campus  Rally,  the  most  popular  exercise 
of  the  Commencement  season.  The  playing  of  Reeves'  Amer- 
ican Band  of  Providence,  R.  I.,  called  the  alumni  from  their 
reunions  and  drew  hundreds  of  citizens  and  visitors  to  the  Cam- 
pus. The  illumination  was  even  more  successful  than  that  of 
1903.  By  the  cooperation  of  the  Fraternities  the  scheme  of 
illumination  was  extended  to  their  houses  adjacent  to  the  Cam- 
pus and  the  beauty  of  the  scene  thereby  greatly  enhanced.  The 
alumni  gathered  about  a  stand  on  which  the  band  was  seated 
and,  under  the  efficient  leadership  of  W.  B.  Davis,  '94,  sang  with 
enthusiasm  Wesleyan  songs,  old  and  new.  To  the  older  alumni 
who  did  not  know  them  the  later  songs  speedily  commended 
themselves  and  they  sought  for  copies  of  the  songs  in  order  that 
they  might  unite  in  the  praise  of  Alma  Mater. 

The  gathering  of  so  many  alumni  for  class  reunions  on  Mon- 
day evening  ensured  a  large  and  enthusiastic  meeting  of  the 
Alumni  Association  on  Tuesday  morning,  at  which  action  was 
taken  looking  to  the  raising  of  an  Alumni  Fund  of  $200,000. 
After  the  adjournment  of  this  meeting  the  alumni  and  guests  of 
the  University  gathered  in  the  beautifully  decorated  Fayer- 
weather  Gymnasium  for  the  Commencement  luncheon.  So  large 
was  the  attendance  that  a  number  had  to  be  seated  in  the  gallery. 
The  caterer  was  Besse  of  Hartford,  and  the  music  was  furnished 
by  Reeves'  American  Band,  which  played  at  all  the  exercises  of 
the  week.  The  toast-master  of  the  occasion  was  Professor  Caleb 
Thomas  Winchester,  '69,  and  the  list  of  toasts  and  speakers  was 
as  follows: 

The  Old  Faculty,  i  ^^v-  ^^^^^P    ^^^^^    D.    Foss, 

]      D.D.,  LL.D.,  '54 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  9 

Town  and  Gown,  -j  H^"'  ^^^^"^    ^'     Sutherland, 

(      LL.D.,  '85 

WESLEYAN  IN  THE  Church,      -j  ^^^'  ^^^^^^    Dorchestcr,    Jr., 

(      D.D.,  '74 
The  Teaching  Profession,       \  ^^^^ •  Charles  H.  Judd,  Ph.D., 

\     '94 
The  Liberty  of  Prophesying,     Prof.  Charles  M.  Stuart,  D.D. 

Tuesday  evening  Hon.  Martin  Augustine  Knapp,  LL.D.,  '68, 
Chairman  of  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission,  delivered  a 
masterly  address  on  Transportation  and  Combination,  showing 
that  the  modern  tendency  to  great  industrial  combinations  was 
the  inevitable  result  of  the  changes  in  methods  of  transportation, 
and  that  the  dangers  inherent  in  such  combinations  can  be 
averted  only  by  efficient  governmental  regulation.  The  address 
was  given  in  the  Middlesex  Opera  House  before  the  Connecticut 
Gamma  of  Phi  Beta  Kappa. 

The  exercises  of  Wednesday,  Commencement  Day,  were  held 
in  the  Middlesex  Opera  House.  The  speeches  by  members  of 
the  graduating  class  in  competition  for  the  Rich  Prize,  which 
are  usually  given  on  Commencement  Day,  had  been  given  on 
Friday  evening  of  the  previous  week,  and  their  place  was  taken 
by  addresses  delivered  by  two  distinguished  alumni.  At  9:30 
in  the  morning,  in  accordance  with  the  notice  of  the  Marshal, 
the  Trustees,  Faculty  (present  and  former  members),  members 
of  the  Faculties  of  other  institutions,  specially  invited  guests, 
candidates  for  honorary  degrees,  the  men  of  the  graduating  class, 
and  the  alumni  assembled  in  the  basement  of  Willbur  Fisk  Hall. 
At  a  little  past  ten  the  procession,  headed  by  the  band,  moved 
down  College  Street  to  the  Middlesex  in  the  following  order : 

Graduating  Class. 

Alumni. 

Faculty  of  Wesleyan  University,  Present  and  Former 
Members. 

Members  of  the  Faculties  of  Other  Institutions. 

Trustees  of  Wesleyan  University. 

Specially  Invited  Guests  and  Candidates  for  Honorary 
Degrees. 

Speakers  of  the  Day. 

President  of  Wesleyan  University. 


lo  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

At  the  Opera  House  the  alumnae  and  the  women  of  the 
graduating  class,  who  were  waiting  there,  joined  the  procession 
and  entered  with  it.  Upon  the  stage  were  seated  the  President 
of  the  University,  the  speakers  of  the  day,  specially  invited 
guests,  and  the  Trustees  and  Faculty  of  the  University.  The 
rest  of  the  procession  occupied  the  floor  of  the  house.  The 
boxes  and  most  of  the  balcony  were  reserved  for  the  families 
and  friends  of  the  Faculty,  of  the  alumni,  and  of  invited  guests. 
The  addresses  of  the  morning  were  delivered  by  Stephen  Henry 
Olin,  LL.D.,  '66,  and  Rev.  Herbert  Welch,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  '87, 
President  of  Ohio  Wesley  an  University. 

Following  these  addresses  the  Bachelor's  and  Master's  degrees 
in  course  were  conferred  after  the  usual  formula,  and  President 
Raymond  then  proceeded  to  confer  the  honorary  degrees  of 
Master  of  Arts,  Doctor  of  Science,  Doctor  of  Divinity,  and 
Doctor  of  Laws.  The  candidates  for  these  degrees  were  intro- 
duced to  the  President  individually,  those  for  the  degree  of 
Master  of  Arts  and  for  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Science  by 
Professor  M.  B.  Crawford,  those  for  the  degree  of  Doctor  of 
Divinity  and  for  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Laws  by  Professor 
C.  T.  Winchester;  and  on  investing  them  with  the  appropriate 
insignia  of  the  degree,  the  President  addressed  each  as  follows : 

Abram  Sheckleton  Kavanagh.  Because  of  your  success 
as  a  preacher  of  the  gospel,  and  because  of  that  clear  perception 
of  the  ways  of  men,  and  that  masterful  tact  which  has  made 
them  the  servants  of  your  purpose  in  building  at  once  the  church, 
the  hospital,  and  the  Kingdom  of  God,  I  admit  you  to  the  degree 
of  Master  of  Arts. 

Robert  Fulton  Raymond.  Because  of  that  intellectual  inter- 
est that  has  made  you  a  purchaser  and  reader  of  the  best  books 
in  many  fields  as  well  as  because  of  your  professional  work,  and 
because  of  that  recognition  which  you  have  won  in  your  own 
State,  as  the  advocate  and  servant  of  every  righteous  cause 
whether  political  or  religious,  I  admit  you  to  the  degree  of 
Master  of  Arts. 

Edward  Bennett  Rosa.  Because  of  your  scientific  mastery 
of  the  far  reaching  laws  that  underlie  the  phenomena  of  physics, 
and  because  of  that  genius  which  you  have  shown  for  invention 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  ii 

and  for  the  application  of  your  knowledge  to  the  practical  prob- 
lems of  life,  I  admit  you  to  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Science. 

Charles  Wardell  Stiles.  As  an  eminent  zoologivSt  widely 
known  by  your  writings  both  in  France  and  Germany,  and 
because  of  your  special  studies  in  parasitic  life,  a  field  in  which 
you  have  no  rival,  studies  which  have  made  the  nation  a  debtor 
to  you,  I  admit  you  to  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Science. 

Alfred  Charles  True.  As  Dean  of  the  Graduate  School 
of  Agriculture,  Director  of  the  Office  of  Experiment  Stations 
in  the  United  States,  you  have  the  distinction  of  being  the 
prime  mover  in  developing  the  department  of  agricultural  peda- 
gogy and  in  correlating  the  work  of  agricultural  research. 
Because  of  this  distinction  I  admit  you  to-day  to  the  degree  of 
Doctor  of  Science. 

Arthur  William  Byrt.  There  is  no  more  difficult  field  of 
Christian  work  on  the  continent  than  that  cultivated  by  a  few 
men  in  our  great  cities,  a  group  of  men  who  have  faced  and 
fought  the  conditions  hostile  to  the  Kingdom  of  God  among  the 
poor,  the  degraded,  the  foreigner  and  the  neglected.  Because 
of  your  success  in  that  work,  a  success  that  has  challenged  the 
confidence  of  all  the  sanely  zealous  men  of  your  church  in 
Brooklyn,  I  admit  you  to  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity. 

Andrew  Jackson  Coultas,  Jr.  It  is  now  more  than  twenty 
years  since  you  received  your  baccalaureate  diploma  at  the  hands 
of  President  Foss.  You  have  honored  that  diploma  by  steady 
intellectual  growth,  by  fidelity  in  the  best  pulpits  of  the  New 
England  Southern  Conference,  and  by  success  in  its  chief  admin- 
istrative office.  I  therefore  admit  you  to-day  to  the  degree  of 
Doctor  of  Divinity. 

John  Galbraith.  You  have  been  honored  by  your  Confer- 
ence with  the  most  responsible  administrative  office  in  its  gift; 
and  by  the  University  in  its  territory  with  the  degree  of  Doctor 
of  Philosophy  upon  examination.  Your  Alma  Mater  recognizes 
the  distinction  you  have  earned,  and  by  her  authority  I  admit 
you  to-day  to  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity. 

Charles  LeRoy  Goodell.  Many  men  have  made  the  gospel 
clear  and  convincing  to  the  intellect.     You  have  carried  its  charm 


12  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

down  into  the  sub-conscious  life,  and  made  it  there  the  source 
and  genesis  of  those  commanding  motives,  and  more  consciously 
of  that  dominant  choice  that  transmutes  truth  into  divine  life, 
that  makes  mortals  partakers  of  the  divine  nature.  Because  of 
your  noteworthy  success  in  this  the  highest  of  all  missions,  and 
that  too  in  many  fields,  I  admit  you  to  the  degree  of  Doctor  of 
Divinity. 

Thompson  Hoadley  Landon.  As  an  honored  pastor  for 
many  years  in  the  Newark  Conference,  and  for  twenty  years 
past  a  successful  administrator  of  the  Bordentown  Military  Insti- 
tute, a  difficult  and  very  important  field,  we  recognize  your  suc- 
cess to-day  and  admit  you  to  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity. 

Albert  Julius  Nast.  Because  with  the  spirit  of  your  church 
and  the  genius  of  your  father,  you  have  for  many  years,  with 
a  facile  pen,  preached  through  Der  Christliche  Apologete  a  living 
gospel  to  a  large  body  of  sturdy  and  sterling  Germans  in  the 
Central  West,  and  in  recognition  of  this  royal  service,  I  admit 
you  to-day  to  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity. 

William  Douglas  Mackenzie.  Your  wide  experience  and 
thorough  training,  your  special  studies  in  Edinburgh  and  Got- 
tingen,  and  your  efficient  work  as  a  Professor  of  Systematic 
Theology  in  Chicago  Theological  Seminary  led  us  to  look  with 
confidence  to  your  administration  when  called  to  the  presidency 
of  the  Hartford  Theological  Seminary.  Your  inaugural  con- 
firmed our  expectations.  Your  future  will  justify  our  hopes. 
I  admit  you  to-day  to  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity. 

Alexander  Harrison  Tuttle.  You  have  served  great 
churches  and  preached  a  great  gospel  throughout  the  years.  It 
is  as  a  prince  acknowledged,  both  as  to  matter  and  style,  among 
the  great  preachers  of  your  denomination  that  I  admit  you  to-day 
to  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity. 

Henry  Clay  Sheldon.  As  scholar,  philosopher  and  author, 
and  as  Professor  of  Systematic  Theology  in  the  Boston  Theo- 
logical School,  with  a  sound  head  and  a  warm  heart,  handling 
traditional  material  with  reverence,  and  facing  the  new  age  with 
courage,  I  admit  you  to  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity. 

Charles  Macaulay  Stuart.  As  preacher  and  editor  in  for- 
mer years,   and   as   Professor  of   Sacred   Rhetoric   in   Garrett 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  13 

Biblical  Institute,  you  have  won  the  admiration  of  students  in 
the  class  room,  the  confidence  of  the  preacher  in  the  city  and 
on  the  circuit,  and  the  esteem  of  those  who  have  known  you 
in  the  church  both  North  and  South.  In  recognition  of  your 
honors  and  your  service,  we  admit  you  to-day  to  the  degree  of 
Doctor  of  Divinity. 

Darius  Baker.  In  your  call  to  the  bench  of  the  Superior 
Court  of  Rhode  Island,  the  State  had  in  view  the  interpretation 
and  adjudication  of  interests  that  concern  every  citizen.  Your 
well-earned  reputation  as  a  wise  counsellor,  a  sane  judge,  and 
trusted  lawyer,  commended  you  at  once  for  the  honor.  Your 
Alma  Mater  welcomes  you  to-day,  and  I  admit  you  to  the  degree 
of  Doctor  of  Laws. 

Arthur  Eugene  Sutherland.  The  question  of  rights  under 
the  law  runs  as  deep  as  liberty  in  society.  An  honor  that  many 
court  but  few  obtain  has  come  to  you  in  your  elevation  to  the 
bench  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  State  of  New  York.  Because 
of  this  dignity  worthily  bestowed,  and  of  our  confidence  that 
it  will  be  as  well  maintained,  I  admit  you  to  the  degree  of 
Doctor  of  Laws. 

Herbert  Welch.  Because  of  that  fine  culture  which  is  at 
once  the  product  of  the  highest  mental  discipline  and  of  the 
noblest  ideals,  and  because  of  that  administrative  ability  which 
has  placed  you  at  the  head  of  one  of  the  greatest  educational 
institutions  of  your  church,  I  admit  you  to  the  degree  of  Doctor 
of  Laws. 

The  following  honorary  degrees  were  then  conferred  in 
absentia: 

The  degree  of  Master  of  Arts  on  Alonzo  Howard  Clark, 
of  the  Smithsonian  Institution,  Washington,  D.  C. ; 

The  degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity  on  Nathaniel  Walling 
Clark,  Presiding  Elder,  Rome,  Italy; 

The  degree  of  Doctor  of  Laws  on  Flavel  Sweeten  Luther, 
Jr.,  President  of  Trinity  College,  Hartford,  Conn. 

The  conferring  of  the  honorary  degrees  brought  to  a  close 
a  Commencement,  which  in  the  variety  and  interest  of  the  exer- 
cises, and  in  the  number,  enthusiasm  and  loyalty  of  the  visiting 
Alumni,  has  been  rivalled  by  only  one  other  Commencement,  that 
held  in  celebration  of  the  Wesley  Bicentennial. 


ADDRESSES 


SUNDAY   MORNING, 
June   24 


BRADFORD    PAUL    RAYMOND 


BACCALAUREATE   SERMON 
President  Bradford  Paul  Raymond 

"And  they  said  one  to  another,  *  Was  not  our  heart  burning  within  us 
while  he  spake  to  us  in  the  way,  while  he  opened  to  us  the  Scriptures  ?' " 
Luke  24,  32. 


I 


HAVE  thought  that  this  text  might  justify  me  in  speaking 
to-day  on  the  following  theme: 


Old  Altar  Fires  Rekindled. 
That  they  would  begin  to  glow,  I  have  no  doubt,  if  the  noisy 
world  could  be  hushed  and  the  voice  of  Jesus  could  be  heard 
again.  The  hearts  of  those  two  young  men  burned  within  them 
while  Jesus  talked  with  them  by  the  way  and  opened  to  them 
the  Scriptures.  That  was  genuine  fire,  it  was  what  we  need 
now,  what  we  always  need.  One  frequently  hears  the  lament 
that  the  good  old  times  are  gone,  and  if  one  frequents  the  prayer 
service  of  the  church,  he  frequently  hears  the  petition  put  up 
from  devout  and  earnest  souls,  "Wilt  Thou  not  revive  us  again  ?" 
I  never  hear  it  but  I  respond  most  sympathetically,  "Amen!" 
Appropriate  as  this  prayer  is,  I  do  not  need  to  tell  you  that  as 
measured  by  the  fruit  of  the  Spirit:  "Love,  joy,  peace,  long- 
suffering,  gentleness,  meekness,  goodness,  faith,"  the  fathers 
never  saw  so  good  a  day  as  this  24th  day  of  June,  1906.  But 
it  is  far  from  what  it  ought  to  be. 

How  often  one  hears  the  causes  detailed  of  our  bloodless 
religious  life.  With  one  it  is  pleasure-seeking.  Well,  there  is 
a  lot  of  fun  to  be  found  in  this  world,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  a  multitude  of  people  are  after  it  like  a  dog  on  a  hot  trail. 
Or  is  it  the  greed  of  gain  that  smothers  our  altar  fires  ?  What 
inducements  the  age  offers!  How  its  opportunities  feed  that 
greed !  You  may  hear  the  hurrying  footsteps  of  the  young  man 
on  the  dusty  country  road,  or  in  the  dull  old  town,  in  pursuit 
of  gain,  as  well  as  in  the  dangerous  thoroughfares  of  the  great 
city.  Or  is  it  infidelity  that  shuts  up  the  heavens  and  forbids 
the  refreshing  showers  to  fall?    There  is  certainly  enough  of 


20  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

it.     Whatever  its  disguises  it  blinds  both  to  the  revelation  in  the 
Book  and  to  that  in  the  soul  as  well. 

I  think  I  must  endorse  all  of  these  reasons.  Our  lukewarm- 
ness  is  due  to  pleasure-seeking,  to  the  greed  for  riches,  to  self- 
ishness, to  infidelity,  to  the  reign  of  appetite,  and  I  think  I  could 
name  a  score  of  other  reasons.  We  have  only  to  read  the  Book 
to  learn  why  the  altar  fires  smell  and  smoke.  On  the  human 
side  there  are  many  reasons.  On  the  Divine  side  one,  and  one 
only.  At  our  feasts  we  put  Him  at  the  foot  of  the  table.  But 
to  come  back  to  the  real  inwardness  of  this  cry  for  the  good 
old  times,  I  may  say  that  we  may,  as  we  do,  shut  our  eyes  to 
the  defects  of  the  past.  They  are  buried  deep  in  the  grave  of 
oblivion.  Thank  God  they  are.  Were  they  all  remembered  they 
would  eat  out  the  moral  heart  of  the  age.  Thank  God  that  the 
grave  is  deep.  Only  the  man  with  the  pick  and  shovel  can 
know  of  the  dead  men's  bones  and  of  all  the  uncleanness  that  is 
under  that  mound.  Ignoring  these  defects,  we  may  come  back  to 
the  all-conquering  faith,  the  splendid  self-abandon,  the  dauntless 
courage  of  the  fathers,  and  may  justly  sing: 

"They  subdued  kingdoms. 
Wrought  righteousness, 
Stopped  the  mouths  of  lions, 
Out  of  weakness  were  made  strong, 
Put   to    flight   the   armies   of   the   aliens." 

And  we  may  justly  pray  that  these  old  fires  may  be  rekindled 
on  the  altar  of  our  hearts. 

That  was  a  notable  walk  that  Jesus  took  with  those  two  young 
men  on  the  way  to  Emmaus.  Were  he  to  walk  this  afternoon 
with  two  of  our  young  men  on  the  way  to  Cromwell,  about  what 
would  he  talk  to  them?  Would  their  hearts  burn  within  them 
by  the  way  ?  Would  they  return  to  this,  our  Jerusalem,  to  relate 
to  their  fellows  his  words  and  his  message?  Has  Jesus  still 
power  to  make  himself  interesting?  Perhaps  it  may  seem  pre- 
sumptuous to  assume  that  we  know  what  Jesus  would  talk  about 
on  such  a  journey,  as  it  certainly  is  presumptuous  to  assume  that 
we  know  what  Jesus  would  do  were  he  to  come  to  Middletown. 
Horace  Bushnell  once  said  "I  know  Jesus  Christ  bejtter  than 
I  know  any  other  man  that  walks  the  streets  of  Hartford."  That 
is  a  startling  utterance.  But  is  it  not  true  that  where  we  hesitate 
about  men,  we  are  confident  of  Jesus  Christ?    The  mind  of 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  21 

Jesus  was  never  so  clear  to  any  age  as  it  is  to  this.  What  would 
Jesus  say  in  a  walk  with  two  of  our  young  men  to  Cromwell 
this  afternoon? 

He  came  into  a  time  in  which  two  currents  of  religious  thought 
contended  for  mastery.  One  was  apocalyptic  and  looked  for 
marshaled  legions  out  of  the  blue  sky,  for  the  victory  that  smells 
of  powder  and  reeks  with  blood.  That  apocalyptic  hope  has  its 
canonical  expression  in  the  Book  of  Daniel.  In  his  visions  Daniel 
saw  the  utter  destruction  that  was  to  be  poured  out  upon  the 
enemies  of  Israel  and  the  blessings  that  were  to  come  to  Jehovah's 
chosen.  While  Belshazzar  with  his  princes,  his  wives  and  his 
concubines  drank  to  revelry  from  the  golden  vessels  that  had 
been  taken  from  the  despoiled  house  of  God  at  Jerusalem,  and 
praised  the  gods  of  gold  and  of  silver,  of  brass,  of  iron,  of  wood 
and  of  stone,  "In  that  same  hour  came  forth  fingers  of  a  man's 
hand  and  wrote."  And  while  the  king's  knees  smote  and  when 
the  astrologers  were  put  to  confusion,  Daniel  interpreted  the 
haunting  hand  in  language  that  has  had  strange  carrying  power. 
And  this  is  the  text : 

God  hath  numbered  thy  kingdom : 

And  brought  it  to  an  end ! 
Thou  art  weighed  in  the  balances : 

And  found  wanting! 
The  Kingdom  is  divided : 

And  given  to  the  Medes  and  Persians. 

In  that  night  was  Belshazzar — slain.  This  handwriting  inter- 
preted to  the  prophetic  imagination  the  inevitable  doom  of  all 
the  hostile  nations  that  marched  within  the  widening  horizon  of 
the  prophetic  vision.  Sacred  literature  runs  in  types  as  well  as 
other  literature.  When  any  inspired  writer  struck  out  a  new 
type  others  imitated  him,  and  so  we  have  a  number  of  books 
not  included  in  our  Bible  of  this  apocalyptic  type.  These  books 
sprang  out  of  Israel's  distress.  These  writers  believed  in  the 
glorious  destiny  of  this  chosen  people,  and,  when  they  were 
driven  to  the  wall  by  their  enemies,  and  there  seemed  no  other 
deliverance,  they  predicted  in  glowing  imagery  the  display  of 
the  Divine  wrath  against  their  enemies  and  oppressors.  The 
Divine  program  was  with  them  always  one  of  catastrophe.  They 
awaited,  expectant,  the  day  that  should  bring  merciless  disaster 
to  their  foes  and  boundless  prosperity  to  Israel.     Some  phases 


22  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

of  this  current  of  thought  are  reflected  in  the  New  Testament. 
And  there  are  Christian  beUevers  to-day  who  are  looking  for 
some  such  manifestation  of  God's  wrath  and  of  God's  grace. 

But  there  was  another  current  of  thought  in  the  Old  Testament 
Scriptures.  It  is  that  represented  by  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy 
where  simple  goodness  in  the  common  relationships  of  life  and 
expressive  of  faith  in  God  is  set  forth  as  essential,  and  in  the 
book  of  Amos  where  Jehovah's  charge  is  that  the  people  have 
not  met  the  common  requirements  of  righteousness  and  mercy. 
He  charges  that  they  have  sold  the  righteous  for  silver,  the 
needy  for  a  pair  of  shoes;  that  they  pant  after  the  dust  on 
the  head  of  the  poor ;  that  they  turn  aside  the  meek ;  that  they 
profane  the  name  of  Jehovah  by  their  gross  sensuality;  that 
they  lay  themselves  down  beside  every  altar  upon  clothes  taken 
in  pledge  and  in  the  house  of  God  they  drink  the  wine  of  such 
as  have  been  fined.  We  find  the  demand  in  Isaiah  for  simple 
goodness:  Jehovah  says:  "You  need  not  stretch  forth  your 
hands  to  me,  they  are  full  of  blood.  Go,  wash  you,  make  you 
clean;"  and  also  in  the  book  of  Jeremiah,  where  God  writes 
His  law  upon  the  heart.  We  are  on  the  way  as  you  see  to  the 
final  message:  "If  thine  enemy  hunger,  feed  him;  if  he  thirst, 
give  him  drink."  These  two  currents  of  thought  were  struggling 
for  dominance  in  the  hour  when  Jesus  made  his  public  appear- 
ance. The  determination  to  take  Jesus  and  make  him  king 
reflects  the  apocalyptic  motive.  The  party  of  zealots  were  revo- 
lutionists. There  were  very  few  indeed  either  of  Jesus'  apostles 
or  of  his  disciples  whose  faith  was  not  alive  with  this  expectation. 
But  Jesus,  with  that  clearness  of  vision,  and  that  fine  sense  for 
the  spiritual  inwardness  of  the  kingdom,  is  strangely  free  from 
the  compromising  dominance  of  this  drastic  hope.  He  knew 
that  Deuteronomy  and  Isaiah  and  Amos  and  Jeremiah  had  defined 
citizenship  in  the  new  kingdom  at  another  level  and  He  attached 
himself  to  this  inward  view  of  the  kingdom. 

But  would  Jesus  have  nothing  to  say  about  the  issues  of  the 
day?  Nothing  about  wealth  and  its  abuse,  nothing  about  mon- 
opolies and  their  tyranny,  about  socialism  and  salvation?  Will 
He  speak  only  to  dead  issues?  Has  He  already  become  a  back- 
number?  He  would  certainly  speak  on  all  these  questions,  but 
not  as  most  men  suppose.  He  does  not  give  detailed  guidance. 
It  is  a  revelation  to  recall  how  many  things  he  did  not  speak 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  23 

about.  He  never  said,  "You  shall  not  play  cards,  neither  shall 
you  dance,  nor  attend  the  theatre,  nor  organize  a  trust  nor  create 
a  monopoly."  What  he  said  is  far  more  searching  and  exacting. 
In  my  judgment  there  is  far  too  much  fuss  made  about  wealth 
in  our  time.  If  we  could  be  caught  up  in  some  great  airship 
and  floated  over  the  great  states  of  this  nation,  what  would  we 
see?  The  young  farmer,  brown  and  stalwart,  starting  in  the 
early  morning  with  his  team  and  mowing  machine,  his  collie  dog 
at  his  heels,  on  his  way  to  the  fields.  There  is  joy  in  his  heart 
and  a  kindly  light  in  his  eye,  for  the  spell  of  nature  is  upon  him, 
and  the  blue  skies,  the  green  fields,  and  the  harvest  hopes  are 
about  him.  The  great  God  is  there  too,  ingratiating  Himself 
into  the  deeper  chambers  of  the  soul  and  breathing  utterance 
of  Himself  in  the  spirit  of  the  song  that  he  sings.  Or  you  may 
see  the  carpenter,  his  kit  upon  his  shoulder,  as  he  makes  his 
way  to  the  place  of  his  task.  His  little  boys  have  followed  him 
far  out  on  the  highway  to  fill  his  soul  to  overflowing  with  the 
wine  of  their  innocent  wisdom,  and  his  wife  stands  in  the  door 
of  his  humble  cottage  to  wave  good-bye  as  he  passes  from  view 
along  the  winding  road.  As  you  sweep  on  you  may  see  the 
young  woman  and  the  man  in  the  shop,  in  the  factory,  and  in  the 
store.  They  feel  the  buoyancy  of  health,  the  charm  of  youth 
and  the  joy  of  activity,  they  are  hopeful  with  visions  of  the 
future,  sensitive  to  all  those  subtle  divine  fascinations  which  bind 
their  dual  lives  together:  farmer,  carpenter,  mechanic,  young 
men  and  young  women,  children  and  youth,  mature  manhood 
and  womanhood,  these  are  the  people  I  see  from  our  airship. 
There  are  seventy-five  millions  of  them  scattered  over  this 
continent  of  ours.  Billionaires  none!  Multi-millionaires  few! 
Millionaires,  not  enough  of  them  to  make  a  small  village.  I 
have  no  hesitation  about  the  searching  investigations  and  the 
urgent  legislation  of  the  time.  They  all  indicate  another  moral 
renaissance.  These  great  money-making  organizations,  like  the 
ancient  forms  of  government,  stand  for  forms  of  progress,  but 
they  also  represent,  like  them,  the  "brutality  of  progress."  And 
it  is  the  business  of  government  to  take  the  brute  out  of  them. 
But  we  are  making  altogether  too  much  fuss  about  wealth.  It 
is  far  too  much  in  the  field  of  thought.  It  does  not  express 
the  heart  of  reality.  You  cannot  put  into  its  vocabulary  the 
values  which  Jesus  came  to  make  current. 


24  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

But  would  Jesus  say  nothing  of  wealth  and  its  abuse?  Come 
with  me  and  behold  one  of  the  visions  I  have  seen.  I  saw 
Justice  blindfolded,  standing  in  a  court  severely  plain,  holding 
the  scales  of  destiny  in  her  hand.  On  one  side  of  the  scales 
was  the  soul  of  a  man  and  on  the  other  was  piled  the  uncounted 
wealth  of  this  world.  It  seemed  as  though  the  gold  would  out- 
weigh the  whole  race  of  men.  But  as  the  blind  goddess  with 
deft  touch  sensed  the  rising  scale  of  things  and  felt  the  soul 
swing  downward,  she  paused  and  listened,  and  on  the  majestic 
column  by  her  side  appeared  a  moving  hand  that  wrote  "Inas- 
much as  ye  have  done  it  unto  one  of  the  least  of  these,  ye  have 
done  it  unto  me."  And  then  for  an  instant  there  appeared 
underneath  the  writing  the  beautiful  face  and  lustrous  eyes  of 
that  angel  that  is  ever  near  His  throne,  the  face  of  Mercy.  And 
I  saw  the  court  of  souls  again,  and  Justice  clothed  in  her  robes 
of  state.  The  scales  were  in  her  hand,  a  soul  was  in  the  scales, 
and  over  against  it  a  meagre  display  of  this  world's  goods.  And 
as  the  majestic  goddess  felt  the  scale  swing  and  the  soul  rise 
she  looked  again.  No  hand  was  to  be  seen  and  no  writing 
appeared,  but  instead  came  a  voice  out  of  the  distant  past, 
bringing  that  old  message  of  destiny :  "Weighed  in  the  balance 
and  found  wanting."  And  then  as  though  out  of  the  very  column 
I  heard  a  voice  saying  "Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  not  to  one  of 
the  least  of  these,  ye  did  it  not  to  me."  And  it  was  dark  and  I 
heard  the  clanking  of  chains.  In  my  curiosity  as  a  modern, 
interested  in  the  questions  of  wealth,  of  trusts,  of  monopolies, 
etc.,  I  asked,  was  the  first  the  soul  of  a  rich  man  and  the  second 
that  of  a  poor  man?  Then  came  slowly  out  of  the  deep  silence, 
"We  know  no  rich  and  no  poor  here,  only  souls."  Here  is  food 
for  reflection,  "Only  souls !"  Did  the  visible  invisible  hand,  and 
the  audible  inaudible  voice  interpret  the  mind  of  the  Master? 

Jesus  attached  himself  to  this  inward  view  of  the  kingdom. 
The  Sermon  on  the  Mount  gives  its  constructive  principles. 
When  you  do  alms,  if  your  motive  be  "to  be  seen  of  men,"  you 
have  no  reward  of  the  Father,  and  that  is  the  chief  matter. 
When  you  pray  shut  out  every  other  consideration  and  remember 
only  that  your  Father  knoweth  and  careth  for  your  needs  before 
you  ask  Him.  He  feedeth  the  fowls  of  the  air.  He  clothes 
the  grass  of  the  field.  "If  ye  being  evil  know  how  to  give  good 
gifts  unto  your  children,  how  much  more  shall  your  Father  who 
is  in  heaven  give  good  things  to  them  that  ask  him?"    Jesus' 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY   "  25 

teaching  never  stops  in  a  relation  to  things.  Parables,  deeds, 
example,  and  doctrine,  all  find  their  meaning  in  the  genesis  of 
a  filial  relation  to  the  Father. 

In  this  filial  consciousness  and  constitutive  of  it  are  all 
the  principles  of  the  kingdom.  In  this  filial  consciousness  lie 
ambushed  all  the  moral  revolutions  of  the  age.  It  speaks  in 
the  words  of  the  King:  "Inasmuch  as  ye  have  done  it  unto 
one  of  the  least  of  these  my  brethren  ye  have  done  it  unto  me." 
"Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  not  to  one  of  the  least  of  these,  ye  did 
it  not  to  me."  There  is  the  pathos  of  a  mother's  love  in  this 
language,  and  the  rumble  of  the  powder  cart  as  well.  Because 
by  it  every  mortal  is  introduced  onto  the  world's  stage  as  a  son 
of  God,  and  a  brother  of  Jesus  Christ.  It  is  perilous  to  crowd 
the  children  of  the  King.  Every  conversation  of  Jesus  must  be 
seen  in  the  light  of  this  revelation.  But  there  is  another  aspect 
of  it,  and  that  too  finds  its  most  pregnant  utterance  in  this 
Sermon  on  the  Mount,  and  we  may  notice  that  it  is  not  an 
abstraction,  not  a  theory  for  the  den  of  the  speculator,  but  a 
plan  of  campaign.  He  says  to  his  disciples:  "Ye  are  the  salt 
of  the  earth";  "Ye  are  the  light  of  the  world."  You  cannot 
even  make  your  offering  at  the  altar  if  you  remember  that  your 
brother  has  aught  against  you.  Such  a  recollection  would  taint 
the  offering  and  corrupt  the  filial  consciousness.  And  here  we 
get  another  hint  at  the  originality  of  the  Gospel,  at  the  uniqueness 
of  Jesus'  inner  Hfe.  The  Mohammedan  could  pray  "O  Allah! 
O  Allah !"  at  sunrise,  could  knife  you  before  sunset  and  tumble 
you  into  the  ditch,  leaving  you  there  like  a  dead  dog,  and  that 
too  with  a  good  conscience.  These  two  aspects  of  Jesus'  teaching 
illustrate  the  fact  that  the  filial  consciousness  and  the  fraternal 
go  together.  To  shout  for  the  one  and  flout  the  other  is  illogical, 
immoral  and  unchristian.  We  have  not  yet  learned  what  Chris- 
tianity is.  What  revolutions  lie  concealed  in  that  utterance  of 
the  Master  in  which  He  shows  that  the  final  fellowship  is  not 
determined  by  blood.  Hear  Him :  "For  whosoever  shall  do  the 
will  of  My  Father,  the  same  is  my  brother  and  sister  and  mother." 
You  cannot  call  your  brother  Raca,  and  drop  him  in  the  scale 
of  being,  vitiating  the  fraternal  relation  without  imperiling  your 
own  soul.  The  history  of  slavery  in  this  country  gives  a  lurid 
illustration  of  the  consequences  of  this  false  relation.  You 
cannot  regard  labor  as  a  commodity  to  be  bought  and  sold, 
disregarding  altogether  the  laborer  behind  the  labor,  without 


26  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

compromising  the  kingdom  of  God  among  men.  And  what  a 
search-light  has  Jesus  thrown  on  the  relationship  that  ought, 
and  that  which  ought  not  to  exist  between  man  and  woman. 
Jesus  will  speak  on  the  question  of  wealth  without  doubt,  but 
not  in  terms  of  wealth.  They  are  inadequate.  He  keeps  to 
the  high  level  of  personal  relations.  He  is  forever  after  that 
nice  sense  of  relationship  that  ought  to  exist  between  God  and 
man  and  between  man  and  his  fellow  man. 

His  sublime  confidence  in  the  working  out  of  this  program 
is  shown  in  His  belief  in  men.  What  confidence  He  had  not 
only  in  Himself,  as  identified  with  the  divine  purpose,  but  in 
men  and  women  of  all  classes,  and  of  no  class  except  the  outcast, 
too  degraded  to  be  classed!  How  they  thronged  Him!  They 
were  dumb  with  amazement  while  He  spoke.  Do  not  suppose 
for  a  moment  that  He  did  not  fully  appreciate  the  foulness  of 
the  outcast  woman  or  the  grasping  greed  of  the  publican.  But 
to  the  one  He  said  "Go  and  sin  no  more,"  and  to  the  other 
"Come  down,  I  will  take  dinner  with  you  to-day."  And  even  to 
the  self-righteous  and  insusceptible  Pharisee  He  said,  "That  ye 
may  know  that  the  Son  of  Man  hath  power  on  earth  to  forgive 
sin,  I  say  to  the  sick  of  the  palsy,  'Rise,  take  up  thy  couch  and 
go  thy  way  to  thine  house.'  "  He  spake  no  bitter  word  to  Judas. 
No  wonder  that  he  brought  again  the  thirty  pieces  of  silver  and 
went  and  hanged  himself,  saying,  "I  have  betrayed  innocent 
blood."  Not  a  word  of  condemnation  for  them  that  accused 
and  condemned  Him.  And  even  while  the  raging  fever  was 
beating  in  every  pulse  and  the  pallor  of  death  was  upon  His 
brow  He  said  to  the  thief  by  His  side:  "With  me  to-morrow 
in  Paradise."  We  know  little  of  the  Gospel  as  yet.  We  have 
worked  the  doctrine  of  depravity  to  the  disgrace  of  the  Almighty 
and  to  the  merciless  disaster  of  the  individual.  Some  far-sighted 
men  and  women  have  been  at  work  building  the  Gospel  into 
our  prisons,  shutting  out  black  barbarism,  introducing  motives 
of  hope,  walking  in  the  footsteps  of  Jesus,  playing  upon  the 
imagination,  that  creative  wizard  of  the  soul,  with  the  motives 
of  an  indeterminate  sentence,  and  making  germinant  there  those 
sentiments  embryonic  that  make  for  morals,  manhood,  and  citi- 
zenship in  the  kingdom.  With  what  art  and  power  did  Jesus 
by  His  confidence  in  men  and  women  play  for  those  central 
motives,  which  once  put  in  motion,  start  all  the  forces  that  make 
for  the  Kingdom  of  God  on  earth.     How  did  He  dare  to  trust 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  27 

the  Kingdom  and  its  destiny  to  twelve  disciples  superficially 
instructed,  and  chiefly  to  three  men  only  blindly  appreciative  of  its 
principles,  intellectually  fumbling  as  to  its  inmost  nature,  stupidly 
blundering  as  to  the  method  of  its  propagandism  ?  Because  He 
trusted  in  the  better  side  of  men.  Because  He  knew  that  as  the 
Holy  Spirit  took  of  the  things  of  Christ  and  showed  them  unto 
men  they  would  rally  to  those  issues  and  pour  out  their  blood 
if  need  be  for  the  defence  of  his  standard.  Can  any  man  hear 
that  message  and  not  feel  his  heart  burn  within  him  as  Jesus  talks 
with  him  by  the  way?  Can  Jesus  make  himself  interesting? 
Have  the  fountains  of  the  spiritual  nature  been  so  dried  up  by 
the  fires  of  appetite,  have  they  been  so  overgrown  by  the  spirit  of 
greed,  that  they  can  no  longer  be  stirred  by  the  breath  of  God? 
Do  we  know  what  Tennyson  means  when  he  says : 

Speak  to  him  then  for  he  hears,  and  spirit  with  spirit  can  meet, 
Closer  is  he  than  breathing  and  nearer  than  hands  and  feet. 

In  dealing  thus  with  personal  relations  He  seems  to  assume 
that  the  work  of  creation  has  not  yet  ceased.  The  new  creation 
is  going  on  in  the  soul  of  man.  Every  man  creates  for  himself 
every  day  his  own  thought,  his  own  volition,  his  own  motives. 
The  emphasis  is  upon  the  fact  that  every  age  has  to  be  created 
anew.  The  child  born  into  the  world  to-day  can  inherit  his 
father's  lands  but  not  his  father's  thought.  When  the  time 
comes  that  the  child  begins  to  think,  he  must  create  his  own 
thought  outright.  Nature  may  stir  him  to  action,  but  he  must 
form  his  notion  of  her  facts,  forces  and  laws.  Men  and  books 
may  give  him  words,  but  he  must  give  them  content.  He  forms 
his  motives  and  his  volitions.  As  every  child  does  this  for 
himself,  so  every  age  is  created  anew  by  each  generation.  We 
are  nearer  the  processes  of  the  new  creation  than  we  are  wont 
to  think.     And  here  is  the  great  opportunity  for  the  kingdom. 

In  this  enthronement  of  the  soul  and  this  establishment  of 
organic  relations  between  the  soul  and  the  Father,  thus  fixing 
the  content  and  quality  of  the  kingdom,  Jesus  broke  with  wealth 
and  made  it  instrumental.  It  is  only  a  medium  of  exchange. 
It  is  not  essential.  Millions  of  the  noblest  souls  have  lived  and 
died  without  it.  He  broke  with  tradition,  the  tradition  that  sub- 
stituted the  tithing  of  mint  and  anise  and  cummin  for  justice 
and  mercy,  and  made  void  the  law  of  God.  It  was  He  who 
taught  that  the  Sabbath  was  made  for  man,  and  not  man  for 


28  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

the  Sabbath.  He  nullified  the  claims  of  heredity.  You  are  not 
accounted  for  by  what  has  gone  before  you.  You  have  a  part 
to  play.  The  children  of  Abraham  are  not  the  offspring  of 
the  flesh,  but  sons  of  faith,  and  children  of  the  spirit.  He 
summons  us  to  go  out  and  create  the  new  age.  He  gave  no 
place  to  the  modern  materialistic  mechanism,  which  belts  us  to 
the  world  of  sense.  This  is  its  philosophy.  Explain  everything 
from  the  bottom.  Work  your  mechanical  concepts  from  sensa- 
tion to  civilization,  from  Eden  to  the  New  Jerusalem.  Verily 
great  is  the  old  mechanism  with  its  belts  and  pulleys;  volition 
determined  by  motive,  motive  sprung  from  desire,  desire  begotten 
by  sensation,  and  sensation  but  the  hum  of  whirling  atoms.  You 
can  hardly  squirm  on  your  own  account.  As  the  belts  tighten 
upon  you,  you  cannot  even  smile  without  a  mechanical  concept 
to  illuminate  the  humour  of  the  thing.  Who  dares  say  his  soul 
is  his  own?  Our  age  has  been  surfeited  with  this  dreary 
philosophy.  But  we  shall  have  to  get  rid  of  it.  Great  is  the 
machine !  But  it  is  far  from  the  whole  outfit.  You  cannot  even 
get  a  vocabulary  that  will  tell  the  story  of  this  gospel  in  the 
realm  of  mechanism.  That  language  is  made  for  things,  for 
things  that  can  be  weighed  in  scales,  for  things  that  can  be 
measured  in  centimetres.  You  cannot  weigh  immortal  souls,  nor 
apply  a  yard-stick  to  moral  values.  Jesus  speaks  for  the  new 
conscience,  the  conscience  that  searches  everywhere  in  all  the 
intercourse  of  men,  to  discover  whether  the  live  option  of  men 
is  in  goods  or  in  souls.  Jesus  kindles  the  new  sympathy  among 
men.  The  new  conscience  and  the  new  sympathy  are  alive  with 
the  life  of  the  Eternal  Spirit  and  confident  with  the  Eternal 
hope  that  they  will  yet  conquer.  Jesus  has  disclosed  the  secret 
of  the  universe.  He  hears  the  will  of  God  in  that  hidden  music 
that  sings  ever  as  the  struggle  and  conquest  go  on.  Shall  we 
yet  go  deeper  than  that  inculcation  of  His  which  declares  that 
if  we  would  live,  we  must  die?  Has  the  Almighty  any  more 
secret  secret  than  that  which  binds  all  moral  beings  together  in 
the  sacrifice  of  Him  who  said,  "I  came  not  to  be  ministered 
unto,  but  to  minister?"  We  shall  hardly  get  beyond  God.  And 
God  Himself  is  at  cost  for  the  realization  of  His  high  purpose. 
This  is  the  real  integrating  process  which  shall  give  us  at  length 
a  kingdom,  a  moral  dominion  where  there  shall  be  no  lie,  no 
tears,  no  death,  no  night. 


SUNDAY    EVENING 


WILLIAM    NORTH   RICE 


ADDRESS   BY 
Professor  William  North  Rice 

Three  years  ago  we  celebrated  the  two-hundredth  anni- 
versary of  the  birth  of  John  Wesley,  the  leader  in  the 
great  religious  movement  of  the  eighteenth  century.  That 
celebration  and  the  one  which  we  are  holding  this  year  are  not 
related  to  each  other  alone  in  the  fact  of  their  nearness  in  time. 
The  subjects  of  the  two  celebrations  are  causally  related,  for 
the  founding  of  this  college  was  one  of  the  effects  of  the  great 
Wesleyan  revival.  The  church  which  was  born  in  Oxford  could 
not  fail  to  recognize  its  responsibility  for  a  share  in  the  work 
of  Christian  education. 

The  earliest  attempt  to  found  a  Methodist  college  in  the 
United  States  was  in  1787.  The  foundation  of  Cokesbury  College 
is  interesting  as  illustrating  the  zeal  for  the  work  of  education 
which  animated  the  leaders  of  American  Methodism  in  those 
early  days  of  feebleness  and  poverty;  but  the  attempt  was  a 
premature  one,  and  the  institution  was  not  successful.  The 
destruction  of  the  building  by  fire  in  1795  was  a  providential 
deliverance  from  an  embarrassing  situation.  When  the  news  of 
the  burning  of  Cokesbury  College  came  to  Bishop  Asbury,  he 
wrote  in  his  journal,  "Its  enemies  may  rejoice,  and  its  friends 
need  not  mourn."  The  time  when  the  Methodist  church  in 
America  could  furnish  a  constituency  capable  of  supporting  a 
college  was  not  yet. 

About  the  close  of  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century 
the  academies  at  Wilbraham,  Kent's  Hill,  and  Cazenovia  com- 
menced their  honorable  careers,  and  to  the  more  enlightened 
leaders  of  the  church  it  became  obvious  that  the  time  was  near 
when  the  foundation  of  a  college  might  reasonably  be  attempted. 
Captain  Alden  Partridge,  who  had  previously  for  a  short  time 


32  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

conducted  a  military  school  in  Norwich,  Vermont,  was  induced 
to  come  to  Middletown  in  1825  by  offers  of  aid  from  the  citizens 
of  Middletown.  In  that  year,  therefore,  was  established,  on  the 
present  site  of  Wesleyan  University,  the  American  Literary, 
Scientific,  and  Military  Academy.  The  sojourn  of  the  academy 
in  Middletown  proved,  however,  to  be  only  a  brief  episode  in  its 
history,  or  in  the  history  of  the  town.  Captain  Partridge  and 
his  somewhat  migratory  school  returned  to  Norwich  in  1829. 
In  subsequent  years  the  institution  has  had  an  honorable  history 
under  the  name  of  Norwich  University.  To  the  Rev.  Laban 
Clark  belongs  the  honor  of  initiating  the  negotiations  which 
resulted  in  the  acquisition  of  the  land  and  buildings  of  the  mili- 
tary academy  for  the  use  of  a  Methodist  college.  The  proposi- 
tion which  was  finally  made  by  the  trustees  of  the  academy  was 
that  they  would  give  the  property  to  the  New  York  and  the  New 
England  Conference  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church  on  two 
conditions: — first,  that  the  property  should  be  perpetually  used 
for  a  college  or  university:  second,  that  forty  thousand  dollars 
should  be  raised  for  endowment.  The  generous  offer  was 
accepted.  Eighteen  thousand  dollars  of  the  proposed  endow- 
ment was  subscribed  in  Middletown,  and  the  remainder  of  the 
stipulated  sum  was  soon  secured.  In  1830,  Willbur  Fisk,  then 
the  honored  principal  of  the  academy  in  Wilbraham,  was  elected 
president.  In  May,  183 1,  a  charter  was  granted  by  the  legisla- 
ture, and  on  the  21st  of  September,  1831,  the  college  commenced 
its  work. 

It  was  a  feeble  beginning.  The  first  Catalogue  of  Wesleyan 
University  shows  the  presence  of  the  president,  three  professors,* 
one  tutor,  and  forty-eight  students — a  small  establishment  as 
compared  with  Wesleyan  University  to-day ;  still  smaller  it  seems 
as  compared  with  the  great  universities  of  the  present  time  in 
our  own  and  in  other  lands.  But  it  was  a  day  of  small  things. 
In  1 83 1  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church  numbered  only  half  a 
million  members — less  than  one  ninth  the  combined  membership 
of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church  and  the  Methodist  Episcopal 
Church,  South,  to-day;  and  the  Methodist  church  was  then,  in 
far  greater  degree  than  now,  the  church  of  the  poor.  Mrs.  Fisk 
used  to  say  that,  when  she  came  to   set  up  housekeeping  in 

♦Four  professors  are  named  in  the  Catalogue;  but  one  of  them  was 
called  to  another  position,  and  never  served  in  Wesleyan  University. 


O 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 

^UFORNA^ 


WILLBUR  FISK 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  33 

Middletown,  she  had  a  sofa,  which  was  then  the  only  one  to  be 
found  in  any  Methodist  home  in  Middletown.  It  was  a  day  of 
small  things  as  regards  the  educational  institutions  of  the  country 
in  general.  Of  the  469  colleges  enumerated  in  the  report  of 
the  Commissioner  of  Education  for  1903,  only  62  go  back  to  a 
date  as  early  as  Wesleyan  University ;  and  the  colleges  of  those 
days  were  smaller,  as  well  as  fewer,  than  those  of  to-day.  In 
1836  the  faculty  of  Harvard  College  included,  besides  the  presi- 
dent, only  five  professors  and  nine  other  instructors,  exclusive 
of  the  professors  and  instructors  whose  duties  were  entirely 
or  chiefly  in  the  professional  schools.  As  late  as  1848  the 
endowment  of  Harvard  College,  exclusive  of  the  professional 
schools,  was  less  than  four  hundred  thousand  dollars.*  It  was 
a  day  of  small  things  as  regards  the  wealth  of  the  country. 
Great  endowments  for  educational  and  other  institutions  were 
yet  in  the  future.  A  millionaire  was  considered  a  rich  man  in 
those  primitive  days.  Such  colossal  aggregations  of  capital  as 
would  make  it  possible  for  a  man  to  give,  from  the  income  of  a 
single  day,  twice  the  modest  endowment  with  which  Wesleyan 
University  started,  would  have  transcended  the  wildest  dreams. 

It  is  matter  for  profound  gratitude  that,  among  the  very  small 
number  of  educated  men  in  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church 
in  1 83 1,  one  was  found  so  well  fitted  as  Willbur  Fisk  to  be  the 
president  of  the  new  college.  He  was  not,  indeed,  a  scholar, 
as  men  count  scholarship  to-day.  He  was  not  a  great  thinker. 
His  "Calvinistic  Controversy"  contributed  nothing  of  permanent 
value  to  the  literature  of  theology.  His  educational  ideas  were, 
in  some  respects,  ahead  of  the  time;  notably  in  his  recognition 
of  the  educational  value  of  modern  languages  and  the  sciences 
of  nature,  and  in  his  repudiation  of  the  claim  of  the  ancient 
languages  to  be  the  sole  medium  for  the  acquisition  of  genuine 
culture.  But  there  was  certainly  a  great  deal  of  crudity  in  the 
educational  views  which  were  set  forth  in  his  inaugural,  and 
which  he  attempted  to  realize  in  the  administration  of  the  college. 
He  was  a  persuasive  orator;  a  gentleman  by  nature  and  by 
practice;  a  man  of  saintly  spirit,  whose  presence  anywhere  was 
a  benediction.  His  was  a  personality  strangely  fascinating  and 
impressive.  He  came  into  the  aristocratic  old  town,  where 
Methodism  in  its  early  days  of  poverty  was  naturally  despised; 

*  Eliot,  History  of  Harvard  College,  pp.  116-118. 


34  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

and,  by  the  spell  of  his  fascinating  personality,  made  himself 
recognized  at  once  as  one  of  the  leading  citizens  of  the  town. 
It  is  doubtful  whether  any  of  his  successors  has  ever  filled  a 
larger  place  in  the  social  and  civic  life  of  Middletown.  He  had 
faith  in  the  enterprise  which  he  was  called  to  lead.  A  striking 
illustration  of  his  faith  in  the  future  of  Wesleyan  appears  in  the 
fact  that  he  built  a  president's  house  which  has  been  deemed  good 
enough  for  his  successors  down  to  the  present  administration, 
and  which  President  Raymond  and  his  family  left  with  regret 
when  it  seemed  best  for  them  to  occupy  the  new  house  that 
had  come  into  the  possession  of  the  college.  The  house  must, 
indeed,  have  seemed  a  palace  to  Dr.  Fisk's  sofaless  brethren  in 
the  Methodist  Church.  Happy,  indeed,  was  Wesleyan  University 
in  the  providence  that  gave  it  such  a  guardian  through  its  years 
of  infancy. 

Well,  the  infant  has  grown.  Instead  of  five  instructors,  we 
have  thirty-six;  instead  of  forty-eight  students,  we  have  three 
hundred  and  thirty-eight;  instead  of  forty  thousand  dollars  of 
endowment,  we  have  one  million  four  hundred  and  forty-seven 
thousand.  More  than  five-fold  increase  in  the  faculty,  more 
than  six- fold  increase  in  the  number  of  students,  more  than 
thirty-six- fold  increase  in  endowment. 

The  treeless  desert  over  which  the  cadets  of  the  American 
Literary,  Scientific,  and  Military  Academy  marched  and  counter- 
marched, has  given  place  to  the  beautiful  campus  in  which  we 
rejoice  to-day.  Of  the  three  buildings  inherited  from  the  old 
military  academy.  North  College,  dear  old  home  of  so  many  of  us 
through  those  fondly  remembered  student  days,  alas !  is  no  more. 
And  the  "ancient  men"  may  weep  for  the  memory  of  the  "first 
house,"  when  the  young  men  shout  for  joy  over  the  foundation 
of  the  new  and  more  beautiful  structure  which  will  take  its 
place.  South  College,  which  contained  for  many  years  the 
chapel  and  library,  and  the  beginnings  of  the  museum,  is  even 
now  undergoing  its  transformation  into  a  building  suitable  for 
administrative  offices.  The  little  brick  building  in  the  rear  of 
North  College  (the  gun-house  of  the  military  school)  has  been 
chemical  laboratory,  commons  hall,  hospital,  carpenter-shop, 
electrical  laboratory,  bacteriological  laboratory;  what  other 
strange  destiny  may  be  in  store  for  it,  I  have  no  prophetic  vision 
to  reveal.     But  to  the  old  buildings  have  been  added  the  buildings 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  35 

of  later  date  adorning  the  campus  by  their  architectural  beauty, 
and  ministering  to  the  needs  of  the  institution  in  its  educational 
work : — Rich  Hall,  holding  the  treasures  of  the  library,  and  hand- 
ing down  to  future  generations  the  name  of  Isaac  Rich,  from 
whose  generosity  the  college  received  its  first  great  gifts;  the 
Chapel,  furnishing  a  home  for  the  religious  life  of  the  institution, 
memorial  of  the  "boys  in  blue"  whose  lives  were  given  for  the 
country  in  the  Civil  War,  eloquent  forever  in  mute  appeal  for 
consecration  to  the  service  of  God  and  man;  Orange  Judd  Hall, 
with  its  laboratories  and  museum,  bearing  the  name  of  the  first 
alumnus  to  be  numbered  among  the  munificent  benefactors  of 
the  college ;  Fisk  Hall,  dedicated  to  the  study  of  the  humanities, 
and  bearing  the  honored  name  of  the  first  president;  the  John 
Bell  Scott  Memorial  Laboratory,  preserving  the  name  of  him 
who,  in  the  bloom  of  youthful  enthusiasm,  loving  and  beloved, 
gave  his  life  in  the  service  of  his  country  and  its  defenders,  as 
chaplain  of  the  U.  S.  Cruiser  St.  Paul,  in  the  Spanish  War. 

Of  the  graduate  alumni'  of  Wesleyan,  728  have  finished  their 
earthly  course ;   1791  are  still  living  and  working. 

The  influence  of  Wesleyan  University  has  probably  been  most 
strongly  felt  in  the  sphere  of  education.  Among  the  living 
alumni  are  numbered  eleven  presidents  of  colleges  or  professional 
schools,  103  professors  and  other  officers  of  colleges  or  profes- 
sional schools,  304  teachers  in  schools  of  lower  grade ;  418  in  all, 
engaged  in  the  work  of  education.  Especially  important  has 
been  the  influence  of  Wesleyan  University  in  the  life  of  the 
younger  colleges  of  the  same  denomination.  Wesleyan  gave  to 
Boston  University  its  first  president ;  to  Syracuse  University,  its 
first  two  presidents;  to  Allegheny  college,  one  president;  to 
Dickinson  college,  three  presidents,  including  the  present;  to 
Ohio  Wesleyan  University,  three  presidents,  including  the  pres- 
ent; to  Northwestern  University,  four  presidents,  including  the 
first  and  the  present. 

Of  the  living  graduates  of  Wesleyan,  346*  are  in  the  ministry; 
218  in  law;  84  in  medicine;  54  in  journalism;  13  in  scientific 
pursuits  outside  of  educational  institutions;  18  in  offices  of  the 
state  and  national  governments;  312  in  mercantile  and  manufac- 
turing business. 

*  This  includes  men  ordained  to  the  ministry  who  are  serving  as  secre- 
taries and  agents  of  benevolent  societies,  but  not  those  in  educational 
and  editorial  work. 


36  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

In  the  short  time  in  which  I  may  claim  your  indulgence  this 
evening,  I  certainly  cannot  undertake  to  give  in  detail  the  annals 
of  Wesleyan  University,  or  even  to  sketch  the  history  of  suc- 
cessive administrations.  We  have  an  excellent  historical  sketch 
of  Wesleyan  University,  written  by  Professor  Winchester  for 
the  Alumni  Record  of  1873,  which  has  been  published  again  and 
again  with  alterations  and  additions,  sometimes  over  one  signa- 
ture and  sometimes  over  another."^  I  do  not  propose  to  give 
you  that  historical  sketch  to-night.  Nor  shall  I  undertake  to 
give  a  picture  of  the  manifold  life  of  the  college — intellectual 
and  religious,  social  and  athletic, — as  it  exists  to-day.  I  wish 
to  call  your  attention  to  a  view  of  certain  contrasts  between  the 
former  and  the  latter  half  of  the  history  of  Wesleyan  University. 

About  the  middle  of  the  period  of  seventy-five  years  which  we 
are  celebrating  to-night,  most  of  the  colleges  of  the  United  States 
underwent  a  more  or  less  decided  change  in  curriculum,  in 
administration,  and  in  general  spirit.  That  change  may  be 
summed  up  in  a  word  by  saying  that  the  colleges  of  this  country, 
at  least  the  stronger  and  better  ones,  became  transformed  into 
universities.  Both  these  words,  indeed,  have  been  used  in  various 
senses ;  and  it  is  necessary,  therefore,  to  define  the  sense  in  which 
our  American  institutions  were  transformed  from  colleges  into 
universities.  In  England  the  university  is  primarily  an  exam- 
ining and  degree-conferring  institution,  though  it  may  maintain 
courses  of  lectures,  and  carry  on  laboratory  work,  and  be  to  some 
extent  a  teaching  body.  The  colleges,  of  which  many  may  be 
more  or  less  intimately  associated  under  the  control  of  one  uni- 
versity, afford  lodging  and  board,  under  elevating  and  refining 
social  and  moral  influences,  to  a  body  of  students,  while  giving 
them  instruction.  In  Germany,  the  university  is  both  a  teaching 
and  an  examining  institution ;  and,  in  general,  no  such  thing  as 
the  English  college  exists.  In  this  country,  the  words  college 
and  university  have  been  used  often  as  synonymous,  and  there  is 
certainly  no  distinction  consistently  observed  in  the  use  of  these 
words  in  the  official  names  of  American  institutions.  There  was, 
however,  in  the  middle  of  the  last  century,  a  tendency  to  apply 

*  Alumni  Record,  edition  of  1873,  pp.  xi-xiv;  Alumni  Record,  edition  of 
1881-3,  pp.  xiii-xviii;  Scrihner's  Monthly,  vol.  XII,  pp.  648-661,  1876;  The 
College  Book,  pp.  301-319;  Davis,  The  New  England  States,  vol.  II,  pp. 
729-739. 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  37 

the  name  college  to  an  institution  whose  course  of  study  was 
arranged  for  general  culture,  and  whose  students  were  candi- 
dates for  the  bachelor's  degree ;  and  to  apply  the  name  university 
to  an  institution  consisting  of  a  college  associated  with  a  more 
or  less  numerous  group  of  professional  schools.  In  more  recent 
time  there  has  been  a  decided  tendency  to  use  the  name  university 
for  an  institution  whose  curriculum  includes  a  wide  range  of  elec- 
tive courses,  some  of  which  are  courses  of  advanced  grade,  and 
whose  student  body  includes  a  considerable  number  of  graduates, 
even  though  there  may  be  no  professional  schools.  In  the  history 
of  Wesleyan,  the  name  university  was  first  given  in  the  expecta- 
tion of  the  establishment  of  a  group  of  professional  schools ;  and, 
in  some  of  the  early  years  of  the  college,  a  professor  of  law  and 
a  professor  of  normal  instruction — of  pedagogics,  I  suppose  we 
should  say  now — were  employed  with  the  view  of  making  a 
beginning  in  the  establishment  of  professional  education.  When 
the  plan  of  establishing  professional  schools  was  definitively  aban- 
doned, the  name  university  in  its  older  sense  became  inappro- 
priate. In  later  years,  however,  we  have  come  to  feel  that  our 
curriculum  is  sufficiently  liberal  and  our  grade  of  work  sufficiently 
advanced  to  deserve  the  name  of  university  in  its  modern  sense. 

It  was  natural  that  the  older  American  colleges  should  be 
founded  upon  the  English  model.  Almost  universally  the 
students  lodged  in  dormitories,  and  often  boarded  in  commons. 
Pretty  close  supervision  of  the  manners  and  morals  of  the 
students  was  practiced;  the  idea  of  culture  was  emphasized;  the 
graduates  were  expected  to  enter  the  so-called  learned  profes- 
sions, and  to  form  a  sort  of  Brahmin  caste  distinct  from  the 
mass  of  the  population.  A  large  share  of  the  students  were  candi- 
dates for  the  ministry,  and  the  institutions  were  closely  related 
to  some  religious  denomination.  To  a  very  large  extent,  in  our 
American  institutions,  the  spirit  and  ideals  of  the  English  college 
have  been  displaced  by  those  of  the  German  university.  Some 
of  the  newer  institutions  have  no  dormitories ;  and,  where  dormi- 
tories exist,  a  considerable  number  of  the  students  reside  outside 
of  their  walls.  There  is  less  detailed  supervision  of  the  conduct 
of  the  students.  The  curriculum  is  more  varied,  affording 
preparation  for  a  wider  range  of  employments.  The  ecclesias- 
tical character,  which  formerly  marked  the  older  institutions,  has 
become  in  them  less  pronounced,  and  is  altogether  absent  in  many 


38  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

of  the  newer  institutions.  The  ideal  of  the  English  college  is 
culture;  that  of  the  German  university  is  Wissenschaft.  The 
English  college  aims  to  produce  a  gentleman;  the  German  uni- 
versity aims  to  produce  an  investigator — a  man  who,  in  some 
subject,  can  advance  the  boundaries  of  human  knowledge.  I 
believe  we  may  reasonably  hope  that  the  combination  of  the  ideals 
of  the  English  college  and  the  German  university  in  American 
institutions  of  learning,  will  yield  a  result  better  than  either  of  its 
sources.  Our  American  institutions  have  learned  that  the  Ger- 
man spirit  of  investigation  may  yield  the  highest  type  of  intellec- 
tual culture;  while  they  retain  from  their  English  original  the 
ennobling  truth  that  the  man  is  greater  than  the  scientist.  The 
change  from  the  college  to  the  university  involves,  in  general,  a 
change  from  prescription  to  freedom  in  study  and  in  life. 

This  change,  as  I  have  said,  took  place  more  or  less  definitely 
in  most  of  our  American  institutions  about  the  middle  of  the  past 
seventy-five  years.  In  Wesleyan,  a  definite  date  may  be  given 
for  the  transition,  the  year  1873.  The  change,  indeed,  had  begun 
before,  and  much  progress  in  the  same  direction  has  been  made 
since  that  date ;  nevertheless,  the  changes  made  in  that  year  were 
so  broad  and  radical  that  they  mark  nothing  less  than  a  revolu- 
tion in  the  history  of  the  institution. 

The  fundamental  element  of  the  changes  made  in  1873  was  the 
transition  from  the  fixed  curriculum  to  the  elective  system.*  It 
is  true,  indeed,  that  in  the  earliest  years  of  the  college,  in  accord- 
ance with  the  views  of  President  Fisk,  no  fixed  curriculum  was 
announced,  and  no  division  of  students  into  classes  was  made. 
President  Woodrow  Wilson  has  said  that  the  University  of  Vir- 
ginia, "under  the  inspiration  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  introduced  a 
free  elective  system  before  it  was  thought  of  elsewhere"  ;  but  the 
institution  was  so  poor  that  it  was  not  "able  to  give  more  than 
enough  courses  to  qualify  a  man  for  graduation."  There  was 
free  election,  indeed,  but  in  order  to  be  graduated  a  man  must 
elect  all  the  electives.  The  earliest  curriculum  of  Wesleyan  was  a 
somewhat  similar  Hobsonian  elective  system.  But  such  an  elec- 
tive system  naturally  and  necessarily  becomes  transformed  into  a 
fixed  curriculum,  for,  if  all  the  students  are  to  take  the  same 
studies  before  their  graduation,  it  is  clearly  advisable  that  all 

*A  more  detailed  history  of  the  curriculum  of  Wesleyan  University  is 
g^ven  in  the  Wesleyan  Literary  Monthly,  June,  1905. 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  39 

take  them  in  the  same  order.     We  find  that  in  Wesleyan  Uni- 
versity the  four  classes  were  recognized  as  early  as  1836,  and  the 
definite  four  years'  course,  with  practically  all  studies  required, 
was  formulated  in  1841.     The  staple  elements  of  that  course,  it 
is  needless  to  say,  were  classics  and  mathematics.     Modifications 
in  detail  were  made  from  tim.e  to  time,  but  in  1858  the  curric- 
ulum of  the  college  assumed  a  shape  which  remained  practically 
unchanged  almost  to  the  year  1873,  though  in  1870  a  few  electives 
in  natural  science  were  introduced.     During  most  of  the  period 
from  1858  to  1873,  the  only  election  allowed  was  a  choice  between 
Hebrew  on  one  hand,  and  mechanics  and  French  on  the  other. 
To  most  students  the  choice  between  Hebrew  and  applied  mathe- 
matics was  very  much  like  a  choice  between  Scylla  and  Charybdis. 
In  1858  a  scientific  course  was  definitely  formulated ;   but  it  was 
only  three  years  in  length,  and  was  merely  the  classical  course 
with  the  classics  left  out.     The  degree  of  B.S.  had  been  given  on 
substantially    the    same    terms    ever    since    1838,    so    that    the 
announcement  in  1858  only  formulated  a  policy  which  had  been 
acted  upon  for  a  score  of  years.     In  1873  the  curriculum  was 
radically   transformed,   assuming  then   substantially   the   shape 
which  it  has  kept  to  the  present  time.     Three  four-year  courses 
were  announced,  leading  respectively  to  the  baccalaureate  degree 
in  arts,  philosophy,  and  science;    the  first  including  both  Latin 
and  Greek,  the  second  Latin  and  not  Greek,  the  third  neither  of 
the  ancient  languages.    In  each  of  these  courses  a  wide  range  of 
elective  studies  was  provided.     In  subsequent  years  the  number 
of  electives  has  been  greatly  enlarged,  partly  by  making  elective 
some  studies  which  were  still  required  in  the  program  of  1873, 
partly  by  the  introduction  of  more  advanced  courses,  which  has 
been  made  possible  by  the  increase  in  the  number  of  instructors. 
The  most  obvious  change  inaugurated  in  1873  was  the  increase 
in  the  number  of  elective  courses  offered;    but  with  this  came 
other  changes  not  less  important  in  their  influence.     In  the  old 
curriculum    there    had   been,    properly    speaking,    no    advanced 
studies.     With  the  exception  of  mathematics  and  classics,  there 
was  in  general  only  one  course  offered  in  any  subject.     Prior  to 
1873  the  most  advanced  course  in  mathematics  was  a  course  in 
differential  and  integral  calculus.     During  most  of  the  time  this 
course  was  required,  and  therefore  it  must  be  made  sufficiently 
easy  to  afford  the  average  sophomore  some  chance  of  passing  up. 


40  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

It  certainly  could  not  be  deemed  a  very  advanced  course,  as  com- 
pared with  our  mathematical  curriculum  to-day.  The  work  in 
classics  dragged  its  slow  length  along  through  the  four  years. 
But  the  work  of  the  senior  year  in  Latin  and  Greek  in  the  old 
curriculum  could  hardly  be  spoken  of  as  advanced  study.  The 
seniors  translated  and  parsed  about  as  mechanically  as  did  the 
freshmen;  and  gained  little  more  of  insight  into  the  study  of 
literature,  or  philology,  or  archaeology. 

Another  innovation  in  the  curriculum  of  1873  was  the  intro- 
duction of  laboratory  work.  Under  the  old  regime,  experiments 
in  physics  and  chemistry  were  performed  by  the  professor,  but 
no  laboratory  work  was  done  by  the  students.  Since  1873,  it  is 
needless  to  say,  laboratory  work  has  been  a  most  important 
factor  in  the  teaching  of  science.  Moreover,  methods  analogous 
to  laboratory  methods  have  been  widely  adopted  in  other  depart- 
ments. Instead  of  merely  learning  a  text-book  about  literature, 
students  have  been  taught  to  study  and  criticize  works  of  litera- 
ture for  themselves.  More  and  more  the  effort  has  been  to  put 
the  student  in  the  attitude  of  an  investigator.  The  seminary 
courses,  which  have  been  established  in  many  departments, 
exemplify  most  strongly  this  tendency.  Under  the  old  regime, 
classes  were  conducted  almost  exclusively  by  the  method  of 
recitation.  Of  course,  from  the  earliest  period,  the  lecture  illus- 
trated by  experiments  was  an  essential  part  of  the  teaching  of 
physics  and  chemistry;  but,  apart  from  these  experimental  lec- 
tures, no  study  in  the  curriculum  was  taught  by  lectures  until 
1866,  when  Professor  Newhall  introduced  a  course  of  lectures  in 
logic.  In  more  recent  years,  while  text-books  are  still  used,  as 
doubtless  they  always  will  be  used  to  a  reasonable  extent,  the 
lecture  system,  with  its  fuller  opportunity  for  the  expression  of 
the  individuality  of  the  teacher,  has  become  deservedly  pre- 
dominant. 

That  the  change  from  a  fixed  curriculum  to  a  liberal  elective 
system  has  been  beneficial,  is  doubtless  the  almost  unanimous 
opinion  of  intelligent  educators  to-day.  The  fixed  curriculum 
was  an  inheritance  from  the  eighteenth  century  or  from  a  still 
earlier  period,  when  there  was  very  little  besides  classics  and 
mathematics  to  constitute  the  material  for  a  course  of  liberal 
education.  In  the  thought  of  to-day,  the  modern  languages  and 
their  literature,  the  sciences  of  nature,  and  the  political  sciences, 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  41 

have  attained  an  importance  which  could  not  have  been  dreamed 
of  one  hundred  years  ago.  The  field  of  human  learning  and 
human  thought  is  too  broad  to  be  surveyed  by  any  student  in 
the  four  years  of  a  college  course ;  and  the  relative  importance 
of  different  parts  of  that  field  to  different  students  depends 
largely  upon  individual  tastes,  aptitudes,  and  professional  plans. 
The  elective  system  gives  to  the  best  students  the  opportunity  to 
specialize  in  their  chosen  departments  during  the  college  course. 
I  believe  it  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  a  student  who  takes  his 
bachelor's  degree  at  the  present  time  in  Wesleyan,  or  in  any 
similar  institution,  may  have  a  better  preparation  to  undertake 
original  work  in  some  chosen  department  of  science,  philosophy, 
or  literature,  than  could  have  been  gained  fifty  years  ago  at  the 
end  of  a  two  years'  course  of  graduate  study.  While  the  oppor- 
tunity of  specialization  is  of  immense  benefit  to  the  best  students, 
the  rank  and  file  of  the  classes  are  benefited  by  the  elective 
system,  in  that  very  few.  students  can  be  so  stolid  as  to  get 
through  the  four  years  of  the  college  course  without  finding  some 
subject  that  they  can  study  lovingly.  For  many  of  the  average 
men  in  more  recent  classes,  the  change  from  the  fixed  curriculum 
to  the  elective  system  has  meant  the  difference  between  four  years 
of  drudging  task- work,  and  four  years  in  which  at  least  some 
part  of  the  work  has  been  brightened  by  the  kindling  of  a  genuine 
love  of  study.  One  of  the  best  moral  effects  of  a  wide  range  of 
elective  studies  is  the  humbling  sense  of  ignorance  which  is 
brought  home  to  every  student.  Under  the  old  regime,  a 
graduate,  if  he  had  not  learned  all  that  his  professors  knew,  had 
at  least  learned  all  that  they  offered  to  teach;  and  he  naturally 
thought  that  he  knew  everything  which  a  well-educated  man 
could  be  expected  to  know.  No  student  to-day  can  be  so  narrow- 
minded  or  so  conceited  as  to  think  his  own  acquirements  cover 
substantially  the  whole  range  of  human  knowledge,  when  he  is 
reminded  by  every  glance  he  takes  at  the  college  catalogue,  or  by 
the  conversation  every  day  in  the  club-house,  that  not  only  his 
professors  but  his  classmates  know  something  of  studies  whose 
very  names  he  can  hardly  understand. 

The  change  in  the  curriculum  carried  as  a  necessary  conse- 
quence changes  in  the  faculty.  Most  obviously  the  increased 
number  of  classes  to  be  taught  required  an  increased  number  of 
teachers.     In  1867  there  were  only  nine  members  of  the  faculty 


42  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

in  Wesleyan,  and  they  were  no  harder  worked  than  are  their  suc- 
cessors to-day.  Of  the  half-dozen  professors  who  divide  up  the 
territory  of  the  one  professor  of  natural  science,  the  majority 
have  each  a  larger  number  of  classes  to-day  than  that  one  pro- 
fessor had.  In  1874  the  number  of  the  faculty  had  already  risen 
to  fifteen. 

But  the  change  from  the  college  to  the  university  means  a 
change  not  only  in  the  number  but  in  the  character  of  college 
instructors.  In  the  old  time,  the  college  instructor  must  be  a 
Christian  gentleman,  a  college  graduate,  possessed  of  scholarly 
tastes  in  general.  It  was  thought  desirable,  indeed,  that  he 
should  show  some  symptoms  of  a  special  taste  for  the  studies 
which  he  proposed  to  teach ;  but  that  was  hardly  necessary,  for 
surely  he  had  learned,  and  therefore  he  could  teach,  the  whole  of 
the  college  curriculum.  It  was  not  till  1830  that  a  particular 
subject  was  assigned  to  each  tutor  in  Yale  College.  Before  that 
date  each  tutor  taught  a  class  or  a  division  in  all  their  studies.* 
It  was  said  of  Professor  James  Hadley,  of  Yale,  that  to  the 
end  of  his  life  he  was  competent  to  teach  the  classes  of  any  pro- 
fessor in  the  college  w^ho  might  be  temporarily  absent.  His 
illustrious  son,  the  present  President  of  Yale  University,  is  a 
man  of  extraordinary  versatility  and  breadth  of  scholarship,  but 
he  would  certainly  not  undertake  to  teach  all  the  subjects  that 
are  taught  to-day  in  the  academic  department  of  the  university. 
In  Wesleyan,  at  the  time  of  my  own  graduation,  the  professor 
of  Greek  taught  French  and  German;  the  professor  of  Latin 
taught  history ;  the  professor  of  mathematics  was  librarian ;  the 
professor  of  English  taught  Hebrew;  and  the  indefatigable 
president,  Joseph  Cummings,  who  seemed  to  bear  on  his  Atlan- 
tean  shoulders  the  whole  burden  of  the  college,  taught  psychol- 
ogy, ethics,  evidences  of  Christianity,  economics,  constitution  of 
the  United  States,  and  international  law.  Logic,  rhetoric,  and 
English  literature  had  been  subtracted  from  his  domain  only 
two  years  before.  The  primary  quality  demanded  of  an  instruc- 
tor in  the  modern  university  is  that  he  be  in  some  considerable 
degree  a  specialist  in  his  department.  Advanced  courses,  semi- 
nary courses,  laboratory  courses,  simply  cannot  be  conducted  by  a 
cultured  gentleman  who  knows  nothing  in  particular  of  the 
subject  which  he  is  to  teach.     Alas!    sometimes  it  comes  to  pass 

*H.  A.  Beers,  in  The  New  England  States,  vol.  II,  p.  715. 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  43 

in  the  administration  of  a  university  that  a  speciaUst  fitted  to 
teach  certain  studies  which  must  be  taught,  lacks  some  of  those 
general  intellectual  and  moral  traits  which  would  be  desirable  in 
a  college  teacher.  "I  wanted  to  get  a  man,  but  I  could  only  find 
a  Ph.D.",  is  said  to  have  been  the  pathetic  lament  of  a  college 
president  who  had  found  himself  unable  to  find  a  candidate  for 
a  certain  position  whose  general  characteristics  were  exactly  what 
would  be  desired.  The  first  professor  in  Wesleyan  who  had 
studied  and  traveled  in  Europe  in  special  preparation  for  his 
departmental  work,  was  Professor  Van  Benschoten,  who  was 
elected  in  1863.  I  well  remember  what  an  inspiration  it  was  to 
us  young  fellows  to  hear  him  talk  of  the  professors  in  Berlin  and 
the  monks  on  Mount  Athos.  The  first  member  of  our  faculty 
who  had  received  on  examination  any  non-professional  degree 
higher  than  that  of  Bachelor,  was  elected  in  1867.  Since  then 
we  have  had  Ph.D.'s,  M.A.'s,  and  M.S.'s  galore  on  the  faculty 
pages ;  and  the  men  whose  names  have  not  been  marked  by  these 
degrees  have  often  had  a  more  extended  course  of  special  study 
than  some  of  those  who  have  received  the  degrees. 

The  university  both  demands  and  attracts  a  larger  number  of 
students  than  the  college.  A  liberal  elective  system  in  an  institu- 
tion with  a  small  number  of  students  is  enormously  expensive. 
It  costs  as  much  to  teach  a  class  of  one  as  to  teach  a  class  of  ten ; 
and  this  simple  economic  condition  makes  the  desirable  number 
of  students  much  larger  in  the  university  than  in  the  college.  In 
the  old  days,  the  college,  with  its  uniform  classical  curriculum, 
made  little  appeal  except  to  candidates  for  the  learned  profes- 
sions, and  above  all  it  appealed  to  candidates  for  the  ministry. 
The  elective  curriculum  of  the  university  offers  attractions  to 
men  and  women  who  are  preparing  themselves  for  a  much  wider 
range  of  employments.  From  this  point  of  view  there  is  great 
interest  in  a  comparison  between  the  statistics  of  our  alumni  in 
1873  and  in  1905.  In  that  period  of  thirty-two  years  the  number 
of  ministers  has  increased  only  4  per  cent.,  that  of  lawyers  only 
44  per  cent. ;  while  the  gain  in  the  number  of  physicians  has  been 
87  per  cent.,  in  the  number  of  teachers  158  per  cent.,  in  the 
number  of  men  of  business  154  per  cent.  The  advanced  work  in 
chemistry  and  biology  has  enabled  those  who  were  contemplating 
the  profession  of  medicine  to  gain  in  college  an  important  part 
of  the  preparation  for  that  work.     The  introduction  of  advanced 


44  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

electives  in  all  departments  has  made  the  college  a  place  in  which 
men  and  women  can  fit  themselves  for  the  higher  grades  of 
educational  work.  The  opportunity  to  take  courses  dealing 
largely  with  modern  life,  social,  economic,  and  political,  has  made 
the  college  attractive  to  those  who  are  to  be  men  of  affairs. 

That  the  change  in  the  curriculum  in  1873  has  resulted  in  a 
large  increase  in  the  number  of  students,  there  can  be  no  doubt; 
yet  circumstances  prevented  an  immediate  response  to  the  call 
for  larger  numbers  which  the  new  curriculum  made.  The  causes 
upon  which  the  changes  in  the  number  of  the  student  body 
depend  are  many  and  various.  From  the  foundation  of  the  col- 
lege in  183 1  to  1838  there  was  a  very  rapid  increase.  The  48 
students  of  183 1  had  increased  in  seven  years  to'  152.  The  illness 
and  death  of  the  first  president,  and  the  interregnum  which 
followed,  checked  the  progress,  and  the  number  of  students 
diminished.  It  never  again  reached  the  number  attained  in  1838 
until  1869,  when  the  college,  and  in  some  degree  the  country,  had 
recovered  from  the  fearful  losses  of  the  Civil  War.  In  1869 
the  number  of  students  was  153,  one  more  than  in  1838.  In  1872 
the  number  had  risen  to  189;  but  then  came  the  collapse  of  the 
endowment,  placing  the  college  in  a  position  of  greater  peril  than 
at  any  time  since  the  struggles  of  its  infancy.  Almost  simul- 
taneous with  this  financial  disaster  was  the  establishment  of  two 
other  Methodist  colleges,  Syracuse  and  Boston,  within  what  had 
been  the  patronizing  territory  of  Wesleyan.  As  a  result  of  these 
conditions,  in  the  next  eight  years  the  number  of  students  fell  to 
163.  In  1880,  however,  the  peril  resulting  from  the  collapse  of 
the  old  endowment  had  been  safely  passed,  as  the  result  of  the 
munificent  gifts  of  George  I.  Seney  and  others,  and  the  college 
started  on  the  period  of  the  most  rapid  growth  in  all  its  history. 
In  the  twenty  years  from  1880  to  1900  the  number  of  students 
increased  from  163  to  350. 

Not  only  have  the  American  colleges  welcomed  to  their  halls 
men  of  a  larger  variety  of  professional  and  business  plans  than 
formerly.  Many  of  the  older  colleges  have  opened  their  doors 
to  women  also,  and  a  large  share  of  the  newer  institutions  have 
been  co-educational  from  their  foundation.  Women  were  first 
admitted  to  Wesleyan  in  1872.  In  the  previous  college  year  there 
was  one  woman  in  Bates  college — the  only  woman  college  student 
in  New  England.     To-day,  besides  those  in  institutions  exclu- 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  45 

sively  for  women,  there  are  women  in  Bates  College,  Colby  Uni- 
versity, University  of  Maine,  Middlebury  College,  University  of 
Vermont,  Harvard  University,  Boston  University,  Tufts  College, 
Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology,  Clark  University,  Brown 
University,  and  Yale  University;  and  in  all  these  institutions 
co-education — the  simultaneous  instruction  of  men  and  women  in 
lecture-room  and  in  laboratory — has  existed  in  greater  or  less 
degree.  In  two  of  these  institutions  only  graduate  women  are 
admitted ;  in  several  of  them  the  women  are  organized  into  more 
or  less  distinct  women's  colleges.  What  changes  of  organization 
or  administration  may  be  deemed  hereafter  practicable  or  advis- 
able in  Wesleyan,  I  will  not  undertake  to  discuss ;  but  under  some 
conditions  or  other  the  privilege  of  education  will  doubtless  con- 
tinue to  be  offered  to  women  in  Wesleyan  University. 

With  the  old  fixed  curriculum,  there  was  little  inducement  for 
students  to  remain  for  graduate  courses.  Yet  the  names  of  a 
few  resident  graduates  appear  in  some  of  the  early  Catalogues. 
In  1872  the  names  of  two  graduate  students  appear  in  the  Cata- 
logue, and  since  that  time  there  has  been  only  one  year  in  which 
there  has  not  been  an  enrollment  of  more  or  fewer  graduate 
students.  The  number  the  present  year  is  seventeen.  Since  1891 
the  Master's  degree  has  been  conferred  on  examination  on 
graduate  courses,  which,  however,  are  not  necessarily  in 
residence. 

The  university  demands  not  only  larger  endowments  for  the 
maintenance  of  instructors  than  the  college,  but  requires  also 
vastly  greater  material  facilities  for  instruction  and  investiga- 
tion. President  Garfield  is  said  to  have  declared  that  Mark 
Hopkins  on  one  end  of  a  log,  and  a  student  on  the  other  end, 
would  have  made  a  first-rate  college.  Mark  Hopkins  on  a  log 
might  have  furnished  a  fairly  satisfactory  basis  for  a  college;  it 
would  certainly  not  have  been  an  adequate  foundation  for  a  uni- 
versity. The  university  demands  laboratories,  museums,  libra- 
ries; the  old  college  could  get  along  nicely  without  them.  In 
1873  Wesleyan  University  was  possessed  of  one  compound 
microscope,  which  was  of  a  pattern  already  antiquated.  W^e  had 
no  chemical  laboratory  in  which  there  was  opportunity  for 
students  to  work,  until  the  completion  of  Judd  Hall  in  1872. 
The  library  in  1873  numbered  about  25,000  volumes.  We  have 
about  three  times  that  number  to-day,  but  the  library  of  1873  ^^s 


46  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

more  nearly  adequate  to  its  uses  than  the  library  of  1906.  In 
fact,  before  1873  the  library  was  hardly  used  at  all.  It  was  open 
only  four  hours  in  the  week.  Under  such  conditions,  it  could 
not  be  used  for  reference,  and  only  rarely  were  books  taken  by 
the  students  for  use  at  their  rooms. 

The  change  from  the  college  to  the  university  has  brought  not 
only  freedom  of  study,  but  freedom  in  other  phases  of  student 
life.     ''The  government  of   a  well-regulated  literary  seminary 
is  patriarchal,"  declared  the  first  president  of  Wesleyan  in  his 
inaugural  address.     The  early  Catalogues  of  Wesleyan  used  to 
contain    the    statement,     ''The    discipline    of    the    institution    is 
eminently  moral  and  paternal."   Tremendously  paternal  it  was  in 
the  old  days,  when  the  professors  made  their  daily  tours  through 
the  dormitory  to  see  if  the  students  were  in  their  rooms  and 
studying,  and  when  the  Catalogue  advised  parents  "to  commit 
the  funds  of  the  students  to  the  president  or  one  of  the  profes- 
sors, who  will  attend  to  their  wants,  and  discharge  their  bills." 
The  latter  piece  of  paternalism  only  vanished  in  1873.     Prior  to 
1873  excuses  were  required  for  every  absence  from  chapel  or 
recitation,   and   unexcused   absences   counted   on   the    standing. 
The  standing  of  students  was  computed  chiefly  on  the  daily  recita- 
tions, the  term  examinations  and  the  annual  examinations  being 
allowed  very  little  weight  in  the  computation.     The  one  coveted 
prize  was  the  valedictory,  conferred  on  the  man  whose   sum 
total  of  marks,  minus  demerits,  for  the  four  years  was  a  little  in 
excess  of  that  of  others  in  the  class.     The  revolution  of  1873 
included  a  reform  in  the  system  of  routine  administration.     The 
necessity  for  inquisitorial  investigation  into  the  private  affairs  of 
students    was    removed    by    allowing    a    moderate    number    of 
absences   from  college  exercises  without  the  rendering  of  any 
excuse.     The  pernicious  and  demoralizing  competition  for  the 
valedictory  gave  place  to  the  present  non-competitive  system  of 
honors  in  general  scholarship  and  honors  in  special  departments. 
The  method  of  computation  of  standings  was  changed  so  as  to 
throw  the  chief  weight  upon  examinations.     The  scholarship  that 
can  take,  at  the  end  of  a  half-year  or  a  year,  a  broad  view  of  an 
entire  subject  in  its  coordination,  is  far  more  worthy  of  cultiva- 
tion than  that  which  learns  the   daily  lesson   with  punctilious 
thoroughness,  and  forgets  it  to  make  room  for  the  lesson  of  the 
next  day. 


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WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  47 

That  these  changes  were  beneficial  none  can  doubt;  least  of  all 
those  who  experienced  the  effects  of  the  old  system.  Those  of 
us  who  felt  the  fret  of  the  old  system  of  excuses,  and  who. 
in  the  competition  for  the  valedictory,  learned  lessons  more 
minutely  than  they  were  worth  learning,  spending  time  and 
strength  which  ought  to  have  brought  us  a  broader  and  deeper 
scholarship,  are  grateful  that  future  generations  of  students  are 
not  to  be  subjected  to  some  of  the  pernicious  influences  which 
were  about  us  in  our  young  manhood.  But  in  this  imperfect 
world  good  and  evil  are  mixed ;  and  there  was  some  good  in  the 
old  grind,  and  the  freedom  of  to-day  brings  some  evil.  We  did 
attend  to  college  duties  with  a  faithfulness  and  punctuality  that 
few  students  of  to-day  know  anything  about;  and  the  art  of 
recitation,  as  it  was  practiced  in  the  old  days,  is  a  lost  art. 

In  the  general  atmosphere  of  freedom,  which  belongs  to  the 
university,  it  is  natural  and  fitting  that  in  increasing  measure 
the  responsibility  for  the  good  conduct  and  the  good  name  of 
the  college  body  should  be  thrown  upon  the  students  them- 
selves. The  trustees,  indeed,  and  the  faculty  cannot  abdicate 
the  authority  with  which  they  are  invested.  The  trustees  must 
guard  the  financial  interests  of  the  college,  elect  the  members  of 
the  faculty,  and  control  the  general  policy  of  the  administration. 
The  internal  government  of  the  college  belongs  of  right  where 
it  is  placed  in  the  by-laws  of  the  institution — with  the  faculty. 
The  undergraduates  are  not  invited,  and  will  not  be  invited  in 
the  near  future,  to  make  the  laws  of  the  college,  to  elect  or  to 
remove  instructors,  to  prescribe  the  course  of  study,  or  to  decide 
what  classes  of  persons  shall  be  eligible  for  admission  to  the 
institution. 

But  college  undergraduates  are  not  infants,  and  there  is  no 
reason  why  they  should  be  treated  as  infants.  The  loyalty  of 
the  students  of  Wesleyan,  shown  in  many  ways,  and  recently 
shown  in  that  splendid  subscription  for  the  rebuilding  of  North 
College  which  made  every  instructor  and  every  alumnus  proud 
of  the  boys  of  Wesleyan — that  loyalty  makes  it  reasonable  for  the 
views  and  feelings  of  the  student  body  to  be  consulted  in  the 
administration  of  the  college.  A  large  share  of  the  friction  in 
college  government  has  come  from  the  fact  that  faculty  and 
students,  inevitably  looking  at  things  from  different  standpoints, 
have  failed  to  understand  each  other.     Full  and  frank  conference 


48  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

between  representatives  of  the  faculty  and  the  undergraduate 
body,  as  now  provided  for  in  Wesleyan  University,  cannot  fail 
to  lead  to  better  understanding  and  to  more  harmonious  coopera- 
tion for  the  progress  of  the  college.  We  are  all  proud  of  our 
honor  system  of  examinations.  It  has  not,  indeed,  ushered  in 
the  millennium.  But  no  one  in  Wesleyan  doubts  that  examina- 
tions are  far  safer  when  guarded  by  the  honor  of  the  students 
than  when  guarded  by  the  vigilance  of  the  instructors.  And  the 
atmosphere  of  mutual  trust  makes  the  whole  life  of  the  college 
purer  and  nobler.  In  the  Athletic  Council,  representatives  of 
faculty,  alumni,  and  undergraduates  have  worked  together  har- 
moniously to  raise  the  standard  of  athletics.  The  responsibility 
of  government  the  faculty  can  never  abdicate;  but  particular 
functions  of  government,  from  time  to  time,  under  reasonable 
limitations,  they  may  delegate.  As  the  undergraduates  are  more 
trusted,  they  will  show  themselves  more  worthy  of  trust. 

The  educational  ideals  which  wrought  the  transformation  of 
the  college  into  the  university,  are  in  no  sense  peculiar  to 
Wesleyan.  They  belong  to  the  spirit  of  the  age.  The  faculty 
of  1873  did  not  originate  them,  but  did  recognize  them,  and  did  in 
a  spirit  of  progressive  conservatism  adjust  the  work  of  the 
institution  to  them.  Nor  is  it  any  disparagement  to  others  to 
name  the  one  whose  vision  of  the  new  ideals  was  more  clear  and 
steadfast  than  that  of  any  other,  and  whose  influence,  more  than 
that  of  any  other,  guided  Wesleyan  University  in  its  progress 
from  the  old  education  to  the  new.  For  more  than  a  half  century 
John  Monroe  Van  Vleck  has  been  a  potent  influence  in  the 
faculty.  As  professor  emeritus,  relieved  from  the  detail  of  daily 
duty,  he  still  abides  with  us  to  give  to  his  Alma  Mater  the  benefit 
of  those  priceless  counsels  in  which  "old  experience"  doth 

"  Attain 
To  something  like  prophetic  strain." 

Bright  and  long  be  the  twilight  of  his  earthly  day. 
"Serus  in  caelum  redeas." 
Wesleyan  University,  as  we  have  seen,  was  eminently  a  child 
of  the  church.  The  controlling  spirit  and  purpose  in  its  founda- 
tion were  intensely  religious.  As  we  contemplate  the  changes 
which  have  passed  over  its  curriculum,  its  administration,  and  its 
ideals,  we  cannot  fail  to  ask  the  question,  can  the  religious  Ufe  of 
the  college  survive  in  the  university  ? 


JOHN   JOHNSTON 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  49 

Intensely  religious  as  was  the  spirit  in  which  Wesleyan  was 
founded,  it  was  not  a  spirit  of  narrow  sectarianism.  The  char- 
ter of  1831  provides  that  "  no  president,  professor,  or  other 
officer  shall  be  made  ineligible  for  or  by  reason  of  any  religious 
tenets  which  he  may  profess,  nor  be  compelled,  by  any  by-law  or 
otherwise,  to  subscribe  to  any  religious  test  whatever."  Non- 
Methodist  instructors  were  employed  in  the  earliest  years  of  the 
college.  In  the  charter  of  1870,  the  provision  "that  at  all  times 
the  majority  of  the  trustees,  the  president,  and  a  majority  of  the 
faculty  shall  be  members  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  church," 
is  distinctly  a  backward  step.  It  was  a  protest  against  a  supposed 
tendency  to  secularism  in  the  conduct  of  the  university — a  useless 
safeguard  against  imaginary  dangers. 

The  university  demands  freedom — freedom  of  investigation, 
freedom  of  teaching.     It  must 

"  Seek  the  truth  where'er  'tis  found, 
On  Christian  or  on  heathen  ground." 

It  must  teach  what  it  believes  to  be  the  truth,  and  can  be  bound  by 
no  creeds  or  traditions.  But  there  was  freedom  of  thought  in 
Wesleyan  in  the  early  days.  Dear  old  Professor  John  Johnston, 
with  his  simple  faith,  for  which  there  existed  and  could  exist 
no  conflict  between  science  and  religion,  was  as  unshrinking  and 
courageous  in  his  treatment  of  the  scientific  questions  of  his  day, 
as  any  one  of  those  who  have  inherited  a  share  of  his  wide 
domain  has  ever  been  or  need  ever  be.  If  Wesleyan  to-day  is 
broad  and  free  in  its  hospitality  to  new  truth,  it  is  only  because  its 
professors  have  inherited  the  spirit  of  the  fathers. 

The  more  varied  constituency  of  the  university,  as  compared 
with  that  of  the  college,  leads  inevitably  to  more  heterogeneous 
religious  conditions.  In  a  theological  seminary,  it  may  or  may 
not  be  the  case  that  the  students  will  all  be  saints  of  the  purest 
type,  or  possessed  of  the  most  aggressive  evangelistic  zeal ;  but 
they  will  pretty  certainly  all  be  church  members,  and  most  of 
them  members  of  a  single  church.  So  long  as  a  college  is  thought 
of  chiefly  as  a  place  of  preparation  for  candidates  for  the  minis- 
try, it  will  naturally  be  in  this  respect  somewhat  like  a  theological 
seminary.  Appealing  to  a  wider  constituency,  the  university  is 
likely  to  have  a  somewhat  smaller  proportion  of  church  members, 
and  especially  a  smaller  proportion  of  members  of  any  one 
church. 

4 


50  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

The  freer  life  of  the  university  is  unfavorable  to  definite  pre- 
scription in  matters  of  religious  observance.  The  abolition  of 
compulsory  attendance  at  church,  whether  on  the  whole  wise  or 
not,  was  at  least  a  change  in  accord  with  the  spirit  of  university 
life,  and  in  accord  with  the  general  spirit  of  an  age  which  has 
little  faith  in  any  attempt  to  enforce  piety  by  legislation.  The 
religious  life  of  the  institution  has  come  to  depend  less  on  services 
prescribed,  instituted,  or  controlled  by  the  faculty;  more  upon 
the  spontaneous  religious  activity  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian 
Association  and  the  Young  Women's  Christian  Association,  to 
whose  work  the  faculty  contribute,  not  authority  and  control, 
but  sympathy,  influence,  and  cooperation. 

If  Wesleyan  has  been  a  Christian  institution  in  the  past,  it 
has  not  been  because  a  quarter  of  its  trustees  have  been  elected 
by  certain  Conferences  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  nor 
because  its  charter  required  its  president  and  a  majority  of  its 
trustees  and  faculty  to  be  members  of  that  church,  nor  because 
absence  from  Sunday  services  was  liable  to  bring  upon  a  student 
demerits,  censure,  or  suspension.  Said  Bishop  Foss  in  his 
inaugural  as  President  of  Wesleyan  University,  "  My  chief  hope 
of  the  highest  moral  and  religious  influence  over  students  lies 
in  the  personal  character  of  their  instructors."  The  influence  of 
his  own  character  in  those  years  of  his  presidency  was  a  noble 
illustration  of  his  words.  Yes,  Wesleyan  has  been  made  a  Chris- 
tian college  in  the  past  by  teachers  whose  words  and  whose  life 
were  an  inspiration ;  but  perhaps  no  less  by  students  who  brought 
from  Christian  homes  the  benediction  of  their  fathers'  counsels 
and  their  mothers'  prayers,  and  through  whose  lives  the  influence 
of  those  Christian  homes  was  diffused  in  the  community  around 
them.  If  Wesleyan  is  to  be  Christian  in  the  future,  it  must  be, 
as  in  the  past,  by  the  life  of  its  members.  It  is  for  us  who 
make  up  the  constituency  of  Wesleyan  to-day — trustees,  instruc- 
tors, students,  alumni,  patrons — it  is  for  us  and  our  successors 
to  determine  whether  the  spirit  of  the  founders  shall  abide ;  or 
whether  faith  and  loyalty  to  truth  shall  give  place  to  cynical 
skepticism  or  flippant  indifferentism,  and  the  consecration  that 
ennobles  life  be  swamped  in  the  tide  of  frivolous  amusement 
and  self-indulgence. 

As  the  spell  of  holy  memories  rests  upon  us,  we  feel  the  pres- 
ence of  other  forms  and  faces  than  those  revealed  to  sight.    The 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  51 

face  of  Fisk,  sweet  and  gentle  as  that  of  the  beloved  disciple, 
beams  upon  us  in  benediction.  The  majestic  presence  of  Olin 
speaks  again  in  those  tones  to  which  men  listened  in  solemn  awe 
as  to  the  thunder  of  Niagara.  And  with  these  and  others  of  the 
old  time  are  those  whom  some  of  us  have  known,  and  from 
whose  lives  an  inspiration  has  come  into  ours: — Newhall,  our 
St.  Chrysostom,  whose  wondrous  eyes,  like  those  of  the  divine 
child  of  the  Sistine  Madonna,  seemed  to  look  through  earthly 
things  into  a  world  that  grosser  eyes  could  not  see ; — Harrington, 
whose  Hfe  was 

"The  measure  of  a  blessed  hymn, 
To  which  our  hearts  could  move, 
The  breathing  of  an  inward  psalm, 
A  canticle  of  love;" — 

Westgate,  whose  character  of  stern  and  stalwart  integrity  blos- 
somed in  the  night  of  sorrow  into  the  consummate  flower  of 
saintship.  But  "  the  time  would  fail  me  to  tell  "of  those  whose 
presence  here  has  been  an  inspiration.  And  not  alone  those 
whose  life-work  was  here  in  college  are  with  us  to-day  in 
spirit:  those  no  less  who  lived  here  as  true  men  through  their 
student  days,  and  went  to  other  spheres  of  duty.  In  the  pulpit, 
in  the  courts  of  justice,  at  the  bedside  of  the  sick,  in  the  halls 
of  school  and  college,  in  the  far-off  lands  of  darkness  whither 
they  bore  the  light  of  Christian  truth,  on  southern  battle-fields 
where  they  gave  their  lives  in  that  multitudinous  vicarious  sac- 
rifice by  which  our  nation's  life  was  redeemed,  they  served  their 
generation  by  the  will  of  God,  and  passed  to  their  reward. 
"  Wherefore,  seeing  we  also  are  compassed  about  with  so  great  a 
cloud  of  witnesses,"  let  us,  with  a  deeper  devotion,  with  a  more 
strenuous  purpose,  resolve  that  the  sacred  inheritance  in  which 
we  rejoice  shall  be  transmitted  unstained  to  those  who  follow 
us.  The  words  of  our  sweetest  singer  come  to  our  hearts  with 
a  deeper  meaning,  since  his  voice,  too  soon  for  our  fond  wish, 
has  joined  the  choir  of  the  immortals — 

"O  ivied  walls,  O  storied  halls, 
O  shrine  of  long  ago, 
The  altar  fires  our  fathers  lit. 
Shall  still  more  brightly  glow." 


AUGUSTUS    WILLIAM    SMITH 


TUESDAY  AFTERNOON 
June  26 


COMMENCEMENT  LUNCHEON. 

When  the  hour  for  speaking  had  arrived,  President  Raymond 
introduced  as  the  toast-master  of  the  occasion  Professor  Caleb 
Thomas  Winchester,  '6g.  Professor  Winchester  was  greeted 
with  long-continued  applause,  and  in  taking  charge  of  the 
exercises  spoke  as  follows: 

PROFESSOR    CALEB    THOMAS    WINCHESTER, 
Toast-master. 

Mr.  President: 

I  esteem  it,  sir,  a  very  great  honor,  to  have  the  privilege 
of  standing  here  to-day  at  this,  as  I  suppose,  the  largest  gath- 
ering of  our  alumni  that  has  ever  assembled.  I  could  wish 
indeed  that  somebody  more  worthy  to  stand  here  were  in  my 
place;  and  yet  to  a  modest  and  unpretentious  man  like  myself, 
must  come  the  contemplation  that  the  more  humble  his  own 
remarks,  the  more  brilliant  will  be  the  eloquence  of  those  who 
follow ;  and  I  am  sure  that  the  speeches  you  are  to  hear,  against 
the  dullness  of  your  toast-master,  will  "  stick  fiery  off  "  indeed. 
I  shall  detain  your  attention  from  them  but  a  few  moments. 

We  are  met  here  to-day  to  commemorate  the  75th  anniversary 
of  the  founding  of  our  college;  yet  I  am  reminded,  first  of  all, 
that  Wesleyan  is  really  a  very  young  college.  And  that,  not 
so  much  by  the  sounds  of  effervescent  juvenility  that  fill  the 
room,  but  rather  because  I  see  all  about  me  here  men  still  in  the 
active  work  of  life  who  can  remember  almost  the  whole  course 
of  our  college  history.  We  had  fondly  hoped  to  see  here  on  this 
day  the  man  who  was  the  first  graduate  to  receive  a  diploma 
from  Wesleyan  University;  it  is  only  a  little  more  than  a  year 
ago  that  he  was  walking  our  streets  in  the  vigor  of  a  hale  old 
age.  Nay,  some  of  us  younger  men  who,  despite  a  few  gray 
hairs,  resent  any  imputation  of  age  and  insist  that  we  still  belong 
among  the  lads — we  find  our  memory  reaches  back  more  than 
half  way  to  the  date  when  Wesleyan  was  founded.  For,  in  fact, 
the  three  score  years  and  ten  that  are  the  allotted  span  of  man's 


56  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

life  suffice  only  for  the  earliest  youth  of  a  great  institution.  Our 
Alma  Mater  is  still  in  the  morning  of  her  years ;  beautiful, 
hardly  as  yet  venerable.  She  has  no  dim  and  misty  past;  no 
dark  ages,  no  tradition  of  a  hoary  eld.  But  if  less  venerable, 
I  think  our  Alma  Mater  is  all  the  more  dear  on  that  account. 
We  have  a  sense  of  having  known  her  all  her  life.  She  can 
still,  as  it  were,  call  her  children  together  in  a  family  gathering. 
And  surely  there  is  among  us  a  sense  of  intimate  relationship 
hardly  possible  among  the  alumni  of  an  older  institution.  One 
doesn't  care  so  much  for  remote  ancestry — they  were  dead  too 
long  before  we  were  born.  It  takes  some  sort  of  artificial  and 
factitious  stimulus,  some  ancestral  Society  of  Colonial  Sons  or 
Dames,  to  awaken  much  interest  in  them.  But  it  is  easy  to  carry 
one's  filial  sentiments  as  far  back  as  our  grandfathers.  And 
there  are  only  three  generations  of  us,  children  of  Wesleyan, 
and  all  three  generations  are  alive  and  here  together. 

In  truth  Wesleyan  has  but  just  passed  though  her  period  of 
experiment  and  adolescence;  old  enough  to  have  won  her  place 
and  proved  her  quality.  Yet  there  are  some  good  reasons  why 
183 1  seems  to  us  of  to-day  a  long  while  ago.  For  in  fact  it  was 
the  beginning  of  an  age — almost,  we  might  say,  the  beginning 
of  modern  history.  The  founding  of  Wesleyan  is  not  the  only 
event  of  note  to  signaHze  that  period.  Several  other  things 
happened  about  the  same  time.  It  was  in  1830  that  France 
drove  the  last  of  the  Bourbons  from  her  throne  and  began  to  reap 
the  peaceful  fruits  of  her  great  Revolution  in  an  orderly,  consti- 
tutional monarchy.  It  was  in  1832  that,  after  long  and  heated 
discussion,  England  passed  the  Reform  Bill  which  equalized  her 
representation  and  admitted  for  the  first  time  her  great  middle 
class  to  a  share  in  government.  Within  four  years  thereafter 
she  had  repealed  the  Corporation  and  Test  Acts,  improved  her 
poor-laws,  given  up  the  antiquated  system  of  tithes,  and  abolished 
slavery  throughout  the  British  empire.  All  over  Europe,  indeed, 
in  the  years  1 830-1 835,  a  great  steady  wave  of  political  and 
social  reform,  a  revolution  wise  and  ordered,  was  everywhere 
slowly  rising.  On  this  side  the  Atlantic  we  had  few  of  these 
evils  intrenched  in  immemorial  usage;  but,  if  I  mistake  not, 
it  was  in  1831,  the  very  year  of  our  founding,  that  the  American 
Anti-Slavery  Society  was  founded  in  Philadelphia,  and  young 
William  Lloyd  Garrison  set  up  his  Liberator  in  Boston.     That 


or        ^ 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  57 

great  movement  was  just  beginning,  to  end  only  with  the  agony 
of  Civil  War  and  the  reconstruction  of  our  national  life. 

But  it  was  not  alone  in  social  and  political  history  that  the 
date  of  our  birth  marks  a  new  era.  In  1831  and  1832  that 
young  fellow  of  Oriel  college  on  Sunday  afternoons  used  to 
mount  the  pulpit  of  St.  Mary's  Church  in  Oxford,  and  then — 
to  use  the  words  of  one  of  his  young  admirers — "  in  the  most 
entrancing  of  voices,  break  the  silence  with  words  and  thoughts 
that  were  a  religious  music,  subtle,  sweet,  mournful,"  thrilling 
the  hearts  of  all  who  listened.  Thousands  who,  like  young  Mat- 
thew Arnold,  could  never  become  the  disciples  of  this  man  John 
Henry  Newman,  were  yet  stirred  by  his  solemn  eloquence  to  a 
deeper  sense  of  spiritual  things,  a  new  recognition  of  the  supreme 
demands  of  religion.  But  it  was  only  two  years  before  that 
another  religious  teacher  and  educator.  Dr.  Thomas  Arnold,  was 
beginning  his  great  work  at  Rugby,  a  work  whose  influence  was 
to  supplement  and  correct  that  of  Newman,  and  start  another 
and,  to  a  certain  extent,  antagonistic  school  in  the  religious 
thought  of  England.  And  it  was  in  the  summer  of  1832  that 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  revolving  in  his  mind  many  thoughts, 
went  up  into  the  solitude  of  the  White  Mountains  to  meditate 
his  duty,  and  came  down  to  sever  his  connection  with  the  old 
North  Church  of  Boston;  next  year,  went  over  to  England 
to  shake  the  trembling  hand  of  the  great  philosopher  of  the  last 
generation,  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  and  to  spend  one  night 
on  the  moor  of  Craigenputtock  in  high  converse  with  the  grim 
young  philosopher  of  the  new  generation,  Thomas  Carlyle ;  and 
then  came  home  to  Concord  to  preach  the  Cambridge  Divinity 
Address,  to  publish  the  Nature  and  become  the  apostle  of  the 
"  newness,"  the  teacher  of  Transcendentalism.  Tractarianism, 
Liberalism,  TranscendentaHsm ;  certainly  they  all  had  at  least 
this  in  common,  that  they  stirred  men's  thoughts  profoundly 
and  forced  attention  upon  the  deepest  questions  of  philosophy 
and  religion.    They  announced  a  new  age  of  thought. 

So  in  literature,  perhaps  even  more  sharply  than  in  politics 
and  religion,  I  need  hardly  remind  you  that  the  period  of  our 
founding  marks  the  dividing  line  between  the  old  and  the  new. 
In  1832  the  two  great  leaders  of  literature  in  Europe,  Goethe  in 
Germany  and  Walter  Scott  in  England,  both  died  within  a  few 
months  of  each  other.     In  England  the  men  who  had  made  the 


58  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

great  literature  of  the  previous  thirty  years  were  now  all  dead 
or  silent;  the  new  voices  were  just  beginning  to  make  them- 
selves heard.  In  the  summer  of  1831,  Thomas  Carlyle,  come 
up  to  London  from  Craigenputtock,  was  trying  to  find  a  pub- 
lisher for  that  epoch-making  book,  the  "Sartor  Resartus,"  which 
was  to  find  its  first  real  public  in  Boston.  In  1832  Alfred  Tenny- 
son published  the  first  volume  of  his  poems  which  contained  new 
thoughts  as  well  as  new  music,  and  in  1833  Robert  Browning 
made  his  first  appeal  to  the  public  with  his  Pauline.  The  new 
literature  was  begun. 

I  will  not  weary  you  with  such  details.  I  need  only  mention  in 
addition  that  the  date  of  183 1  serves  also  excellently  well  as  a 
dividing  point  in  the  history  of  science  and  the  mechanic  arts, 
separating  us  from  that  happy  age  when  science  had  not  filled 
us  with  hurry  and  worry,  the  age  of  quiet  and  blissful  ignorance 
when  men  lived  without  rapid  transit  and  died  without  bacteria. 
One  fact  will  suffice.  At  the  beginning  of  1831  there  were,  I 
think,  about  20  miles  of  railway  in  the  United  States,  on  which 
cars  were  drawn  by  horses;  within  five  years  over  $50,ocx),ooo 
had  been  invested  in  railroads  in  this  country.  The  wonderful 
era  of  applied  science,  with  all  its  manifold  influences  upon 
economic,  social,  political  and  even  moral  life,  had  opened.  The 
bacteria  were  to  come  later. 

The  time  was  marked  by  the  expansion  of  all  forms  of  activ- 
ity, and  by  a  sense  that  all  institutions  and  beliefs  were  to  be 
reviewed  and  recast  in  the  light  of  a  larger  philosophy.  When 
young  Mr.  Emerson  gave  his  first  course  of  lectures  in  Boston, 
in  a  winter  of  the  early  thirties,  he  announced  as  his  subject, 
"  The  Philosophy  of  Modern  History,  or  the  Foundations  of 
Religion,  Politics,  Science,  Literature  and  Art,  in  the  Nature 
of  things,  and  the  action  of  General  Causes  upon  them  at  the 
present  day." 

Well,  now  it  was  not  merely  by  accident  that  the  founding  of 
Wesleyan  University  coincided  with  all  these  things.  Our  Meth- 
odist fathers  and  grandfathers  felt  the  impulse  of  that  wave  of 
thought  then  going  round  the  world.  They  were  not  men  of 
narrow  minds  or  narrow  outlook.  They  were  :fearful  of  an 
unintelligent  religion  and  of  an  irreligious  intelligence.  They 
sought  the  truth,  equally  ready  to  conserve  the  old  and  to  wel- 
come the  new.    And  it  was  in  this  spirit  that  they  founded  Wes- 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  59 

leyan  University.  They  dared  to  put  into  its  charter  the  pro- 
vision that  "  no  by-law  or  ordinance  shall  be  established  which 
shall  make  the  religious  tenets  of  any  person  a  condition  of 
admission  to  any  privilege  in  said  university ;  and  that  no  presi- 
dent, professor  or  other  officer  shall  be  made  ineligible  for, 
or  by  reason  of,  any  religious  tenets  that  he  may  profess,  nor 
be  compelled  by  any  by-laws  or  otherwise  to  subscribe  to  any 
religious  test  whatever."  This,  I  judge  from  his  address  the 
other  evening,  was  liberal  enough  to  satisfy  even  Professor  Rice. 
Those  of  you  who  listened  to  that  eloquent  address  need  no 
other  proof  of  the  position  that  Wesleyan  University  has  main- 
tained from  that  day  to  this — by  ideals,  by  temper,  by  educational 
methods,  in  the  class  of  the  first  New  England  Colleges.  We 
are  all  proud  of  our  Alma  Mater,  of  her  seventy-five  years' 
work  and  history ;  if  any  Wesleyan  alumnus  isn't,  there  must  be 
something  the  matter  with  his  head  or  his  heart. 

The  first  toast  on  our  list  is  The  Old  Faculty,  and  it  will  be 
responded  to  by  one  who  once  was  himself  the  honored  and 
beloved  President  of  Wesleyan.  I  trust,  however,  that  he  will 
not  interpret  this  phrase  "  The  Old  Faculty  "  to  mean  the  faculty 
of  which  he  was  the  head;  because  I  was  myself  a  member  of 
the  faculty  then — in  fact  before  he  was;  and  if  he  isn't  sensi- 
tive on  this  matter  of  age,  I  own  that  I  am.  I  would  not  venture 
in  his  presence  any  word  of  idle  compliment;  but  I  am  quite  sure 
you  will  all  agree  with  me  that  no  better  representative  of  Wes- 
leyan manhood  could  be  found,  courteous,  scholarly,  prominent 
in  education  and  religion,  maintaining  through  the  years  the  dig- 
nity of  a  blameless  life.  Yet  no  man  is  perfect.  We  have  heard 
it  remarked  that  to  err  is  human.  And  the  sad  thing  is  that  the 
mistakes  of  life  can  never  be  retrieved.  This  president,  when 
just  sweeping  up  to  the  meridian  of  his  fame  and  influence, 
with  that  error  so  characteristic  of  noble  minds,  for  one  fatal 
moment  mistook  the  call  of  duty  and  lapsed  into  the  Episcopacy — 
whence  there  is  no  more  rising.  We  all  revere  the  bishop  as  in 
duty  bound,  but  I  shall  introduce  him  here  with  that  more 
intimate  title,  Cyrus  D.  Foss,  Ex-President  of  Wesleyan  Uni- 
versity. 


6o  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

BISHOP  CYRUS  DAVID  FOSS. 
The  Old  Faculty. 

I  FEEL  like  introducing  myself  with  an  incident  which  I 
heard  from  the  lips  of  one  of  our  recently  elected  and 
younger  Bishops.  He  told  me  he  had  recently  had  a  visit 
from  his  wife's  father,  who,  when  he  had  been  his  guest 
for  several  days,  was  accosted  one  day  by  his  granddaughter 
in  this  way :  "  Grandpa,  I  observe  that  your  blessing  at  the 
table  from  day  to  day  is  very  felicitous,  and  sometimes 
very  discriminating."  That  led  the  old  gentleman  to  smile  and 
to  wait  a  little  to  see  what  might  be  coming  next.  She  said, 
"  Yes,  I  observe  that  at  dinner,  when  we  generally  have  a  joint 
or  a  steak,  you  always  thank  God  for  these  new  mercies;  but  at 
breakfast  when  we  often  have  hash,  you  thank  God  for  these 
continued  mercies." 

I  seriously  doubt  whether  this  particular  audience  is  ready  to 
thank  God  for  all  the  continued  mercies  that  come  to  it.  I  have 
been  here  so  many  times  since  I  ceased  to  be  President  of  the 
College,  and  have  spoken  on  so  many  occasions;  and  then  last 
Sunday  I  was  twice  thrust  before  your  eyes  in  public;  and  this 
morning  again  the  Board  of  Trustees  placed  me  before  the  eyes 
and  ears  of  the  Alumni :  so  you  may  well  be  weary  of  continued 
mercies.  I  am  very  much  obliged  to  the  toast-master  for  two 
reasons.  I  shall  not  make  the  blunder  that  he  suggested  as 
possible  to  me  with  regard  to  who  constituted  "  the  Old  Fac- 
ulty." I  know  better  than  that.  I  know  the  Faculty  to  which  he 
belongs  is  a  younger  and  recent  one,  though  his  Class  dates  back 
to  '69 ;  and  that  makes  him  the  next  oldest  fellow  on  the  program 
to  myself.  I  am  glad  that  he  has  talked  so  much  condensed  and 
wonderfully  polished  and  beautiful  good  sense  that  nobody  else 
this  afternoon  is  bound  to  bring  forth  any  of  that  rare  article. 
I  am  obliged  also  to  the  President  for  having  announced  him 
as  Professor  "C.  T.  Manchester" ;  else  I  would  not  have  known 
but  a  repeating  rifle  might  bring  me  down  any  minute. 

But  for  the  Old  Faculty.  I  came  here  in  the  year  1850,  a 
callow  boy  of  16,  full  of  ambition  and  hope  and  joy,  and  found 
the  four  years  from  16  to  20,  in  many  respects  (as  I  look  back 
over  my  whole  career  since),  the  best  four  years  of  my  life. 
I  was  in  perfect  health,  I  was  well  prepared  when  I  came,  I 


CYRUS    DAVID   FOSS 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  6i 

was  a  tolerable  student,  I  loved  my  instructors,  I  enjoyed  every 
book  I  had  to  read  or  recite  upon,  and  had  a  good  time.  I 
passed  through  the  four  years  accumulating  recollections  which 
have  been  an  inspiration  to  me  from  then  till  now. 

The  Old  Faculty :  That  doesn't  take  me  back  to  Willbur  Fisk, 
for  I  never  saw  Dr.  Fisk :  but  oh,  his  fragrant  memory !  How 
it  lingered  here,  and  was  an  inspiration  to  every  officer  and 
every  student.  Nor  was  Joseph  Holdich  here  at  that  time.  I 
afterward  became  his  pastor,  and  knew  him  very  well  in  New 
York,  and  learned  to  appreciate  the  stories  that  came  down  to 
our  time  about  his  near-sightedness,  and  the  immense  and  gra- 
cious courtesy  which  led  him,  it  is  said,  actually  to  bow  to  a 
cow  and  say  "  Good  morning.  Madam." 

I  well  remember  the  majestic  form  of  Stephen  Olin  moving 
about  the  campus.  He  was  then  broken  by  disease  and  feeble, 
and  passed  on  to  his  reward  just  a  year  after  I  entered  college. 
I  never  heard  one  of  those  mighty  sermons,  the  reputation  of 
which  came  down  to  us,  and  concerning  which  we  were  told  that, 
when  the  Congregationalists  were  going  to  their  second  service 
at  half  past  one  on  Sunday,  the  Methodists  were  walking  home 
after  a  baccalaureate  sermon  of  from  two  and  a  half  to  three 
hours  in  length,  the  last  half  hour  having  been  spent  in  keen 
regret  because  the  sermon  was  about  to  stop.  I  never  heard 
Olin  preach  one  of  those  sermons ;  but  I  did  hear  in  the  Chapel 
those  little  lectures  he  gave  us  students  in  which  he  rose  to 
such  lofty  ethical  majesty  that  we  would  have  thought  it  a 
mortal  sin  to  turn  round  in  the  wrong  direction.  I  remember 
that  on  one  occasion,  he  told  the  boys,  after  a  broken  wood- 
house  door  had  been  piled  on  a  bonfire,  of  the  awful  sin  of 
theft,  and  that  he  did  not  wish  to  know  who  the  young  men 
were  who  could  do  such  a  thing  as  that,  for  he  never  could 
respect  them  any  more.  I  never  heard  him  preach,  I  say;  but 
I  did  hear  his  lectures  on  the  Theory  and  Practice  of  the  Scholas- 
tic Life,  in  the  little  old  basement  of  South  College,  afterwards 
a  coal  hole.  That  is  where  the  Chapel  was,  where  we  used  to 
go  to  morning  prayers  at  6  o'clock,  sometimes  with  bedquilts 
around  our  shoulders ;  and  then  directly  to  a  recitation  before 
breakfast.  The  dear  old  Doctor  would  walk  around  the  campus 
and  smile  upon  our  games;  and  we  often  saw,  holding  one  of 
his  fingers,  that  little  boy  whose  tall  and  stalwart  form  will 


62  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

appear  before  you  to-morrow.  Once  that  little  boy  was  heard 
to  say,  as  he  was  walking  across  the  campus  one  day  with  his 
hands  behind  him,  "  God  forbid  that  I  should  ever  be  the  Presi- 
dent of  a  Methodist  College." 

Dr.  Charles  K.  True :  I  cannot  characterize  him  in  a  word.  A 
splendid  genius  in  the  pulpit,  a  brilliant  teacher,  often  relieving 
our  minds  of  the  personal  responsibility  of  reciting  by  pouring 
forth  the  eloquent  stores  of  what  was  uppermost  in  his  mind, 
whether  it  had  to  do  with  the  subject  of  the  lesson  or  not;  and 
I  fear  we  led  him  on. 

John  W.  Lindsay:  sleek,  spare,  young,  bright, — I  cannot  for- 
get that  he  taught  me  to  love  to  scan  the  Latin  poets,  and 
inducted  me  into  the  mysteries  of  Aleph,  Beth,  Gimel,  Daleth, 
and  discoursed  learnedly  about  Qamets  Chatuph. 

Harvey  B.  Lane  dug  around  the  Greek  roots  with  great  skill 
and  got  deeper  than  any  of  the  class  did.  He  always  had  stock 
stories  to  get  off  to  each  class ;  e.  g.,  when  on  a  sultry  hot  day 
some  fellow  would  come  in  with  too  scanty  a  toilet,  because  of 
the  heat,  he  was  likely  to  say  to  him,  "  Mr.  Smith,  don't  you 
think  that  you  may  get  to  the  Georgia  costume  yet?"  Well, 
Mr.  Smith  always  had  to  ask  what  that  was,  and  was  told,  "  A 
shirt  collar  and  a  pair  of  spurs." 

Dear  old  Dr.  Johnston,  Prof.  Johnnie, — yes,  that  is  what  we 
called  him,  and  so  we  shall  always  think  of  him.  I  do  not  believe 
there  is  any  professor  in  this  College  to-day  who  knows  so  much 
about  so  many  sciences  as  Professor  Johnston  did;  or  ever  will 
be  again,  to  the  end  of  time;  for  he  knew  something,  and  a 
good  deal,  about  all  of  what  were  called  "  the  Natural  Sciences," 
and  taught  the  whole  of  them.  We  got  at  least  the  beginnings 
of  them  from  him.  He  was  delightful;  yet  now  and  then,  in 
spite  of  all  his  sobriety  and  sweetness,  he  would  turn  upon 
some  student  so  that  he  would  not  forget  it ;  as  my  next  senior 
colleague  could  tell  you.  Once  in  the  old  brick  building  he  was 
called  upon  to  recite  in  anatomy.  The  Professor  asked  about  the 
joints  of  the  lower  extremities.  The  student  told  about  the  ball 
and  socket  joint  at  the  hip  and  the  hinge  joint  at  the  knee,  and 
made  a  perfect  recitation  as  he  almost  always  did ;  as  he  was  about 
to  sit  down,  he  said,  "Professor,  if  that  arrangement  had  been 
reversed,  in  the  order  of  nature,  and  the  ball  and  socket  joint 
had  been  at  the  knee  and  the  hinge  joint  at  the  hip,  it  would  not 


STEPHEN   OLIN 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  63 

have  done  for  a  man  to  get  '  boozy/  would  it?"  The  Professor 
looked  at  him  as  black  as  he  ever  looked  at  anybody,  which 
wasn't  very  black,  and  said  "  Next !"  When  the  next  had  recited 
and  taken  his  seat,  he  turned  his  eyes  half  way  toward  Henry 
W.  Warren  and  said,  "  It  always  pains  me  to  see  young  men 
prostituting  their  energies  by  attempts  at  wit." 

With  the  account  of  these  dear  old  professors  of  those  days, 
I  must  include  one  other  professor  and  one  tutor;  and  then 
give  my  place  to  those  who  are  to  follow  me,  for  fear  of  this 
Winchester  rifle  at  my  right  hand.  I  will  say  this.  Of  all  the 
instructors  I  ever  had,  none  on  the  whole  was  to  me  quite  so 
great  an  inspiration,  (possibly  because  I  was  always  fond  of 
mathematics,  even  in  boyhood,  and  when  in  the  district  school 
at  the  age  of  eleven,  would  sit  up  until  midnight,  if  my  parents 
would  let  me,  to  work  out  the  hard  problems  at  the  end  of 
Daboll's  arithmetic;  but  largely  for  reasons  more  personal  to 
the  man),  no  man  ever  was  to  me,  on  the  whole,  so  inspiring 
and  admired  a  teacher  as  Augustus  W.  Smith,  author  of  the 
book  on  Mechanics  in  the  college  course  in  those  days,  which 
few  ever  mastered.  He  was  a  gracious,  sweet  Christian  gentle- 
man. And  yet,  now  and  then,  in  the  class,  he  would  turn  in  his 
quiet  way  upon  some  fellow  who  forgot  the  proprieties,  as  once, 
I  fear  at  least,  this  particular  student  did.  When  in  too  free 
and  easy  position  on  the  bench  he  was  brought  to  time  suddenly 
by  the  gracious,  sweet  professor,  who  said,  "  Mr.  Foss,  we 
are  accustomed  in  this  class  to  deal  with  parallelopipeds,  but  not 
with  horizontalbipeds."  Another  name  I  must  mention  here 
among  the  most  beloved  names  I  have  ever  known  outside  the 
nearest  circles  of  my  own  home  and  my  father's  home,  the  name 
of  Albert  S.  Hunt,  my  tutor  in  rhetoric  and  in  other  studies  of 
the  last  year  of  my  course ;  my  dear  personal  friend,  my  friend 
in  the  seminary  before  I  came  here,  and  my  instructor  there. 
I  cannot  speak  as  I  would  speak  of  him.  He  has  gone  on  to 
the  excellent  glory;  but  I  will  say  that  if  every  college  had  a 
small  number  of  men  in  its  Faculty,  with  the  genius  for  such 
wise,  careful,  spiritual  influence,  as  he  exercised  over  the  young 
men  whom  he  came  to  know  and  to  love,  you  would  have  little 
concern  about  the  higher  criticism  or  the  lower  criticism,  or 
anything  else;  for  such  teaching  and  such  influence  and  such 
character  will  carry  the  knowledge  of  the  Master  as  He  lived 


64  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

and  suffered  and  died,  and  rose  again,  to  human  souls;  as  his 
influence  did  to  mine.  Yesterday  as  soon  as  I  could  get  there, 
I  went  to  the  old  South  College  and  climbed  up  those  new  stone 
and  iron  steps  to  the  old  room  on  the  left  side  near  the  second 
chimney;  where  on  a  certain  evening  in  the  month  of  March, 
1852,  words  of  that  beloved  friend,  the  like  of  which  I  had 
heard  from  his  lips  many  times  through  the  two  college  years 
preceding,  were  the  means  of  leading  me  then  and  there  to  such 
personal  knowledge  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  as  I  have  never 
lost ;  and  I  now  thank  God  for  those  words  from  his  saintly  and 
now  sainted  lips,  spoken  fifty- four  years  ago. 

Dear  Old  Faculty ;  God  bless  their  memory.  In  respect  to  per- 
sonal character  and  in  respect  to  learning  and  culture,  con- 
sidering the  differences  of  the  times,  they  stand  in  worthy  com- 
parison with  the  best  educated  Faculties  of  that  time  in  any 
College,  and  of  this  time  in  any  College.  I  honor  their  memory, 
and  am  deeply  grateful  for  such  influences  as  came  to  me  in  the 
Wesleyan  University  in  my  happy  youth. 

The  Toast-master: 

Our  next  toast  is  in  the  time-honored  phrase  "  Town  and 
Gown."  This  term  "  Gown,"  in  the  early  history  of  Wesleyan, 
had,  I  take  it,  merely  a  metaphorical  or  symbolic  significance. 
It  is  true,  indeed,  that  the  President  on  Commencement  Day 
was  used  to  appear  disguised  in  that  mediaeval  attire ;  but  none 
of  the  Faculty  ventured  such  compliance  with  monkish  con- 
vention; while  as  to  the  undergraduates,  I  have  heard  their 
academic  costume  not  very  inaccurately  described  as  "  a  shawl  in 
winter  and  a  linen  duster  in  summer."  But  as,  with  the  passing 
of  the  years,  Wesleyan  has  begun  to  take  on  something  of  the 
venerable  mood  of  age,  the  Faculty,  one  after  another,  have  con- 
sented to  assume  garments  of  "  staid  wisdom's  hue,"  and  now 
pass  in  procession,  as  Milton  hath  it, 

"All  in  robes  of  darkest  grain, 
Flowing  with  majestic  train." 

And  the  same  stately  envelopment  of  the  Senior  on  Commence- 
ment day  gives  to  his  oracular  utterances — when  we  let  him  utter 
'em — ^that  air  of  old  experience  that 

"doth  attain 
To  something  like  prophetic  strain." 


NATHAN    BANGS 


UNIVEr^SlTY 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  6$ 

In  later  years,  indeed,  a  certain  small  section  of  the  undergradu- 
ates have  persisted  in  wearing  gowns  every  day  in  the  year — of 
a  different  color  and  cut. 

I  do  not  know  how  the  gentleman  who  is  to  respond  to  this 
toast  will  interpret  it.  I  have  thought  it  probable  he  might  say 
something  of  the  relation  between  our  cloistered,  academic  life 
and  that  wider  world  of  politics  and  law  of  which  he  is  himself 
so  honored  a  representative.  In  the  early  years,  our  Wesleyan 
fathers  seem  to  have  thought  the  world  more  in  need  of  the 
gospel  than  of  the  law;  but  within  the  past  twenty-five  years 
many  of  our  alumni  have  entered  the  legal  profession,  and  a 
goodly  number,  like  the  honored  gentleman  who  is  to  respond 
to  this  toast,  have  risen  to  eminence  at  the  bar  and  on  the  bench. 
We  are  proud  to  believe  that  we  may  say  of  all  of  them,  as  of 
him,  that  they  have  done  nothing  to  debase  the  honor  of  the 
advocate  or  soil  the  ermine  of  the  judge. 

It  is  a  trivial  matter,  but  as  I  introduce  this  worthy  and 
upright  judge  I  am  reminded  of  the- old  proverb,  "Let  me  make 
the  songs  of  a  nation  and  I  care  not  who  makes  its  laws."  I 
don't  know  that  Judge  Sutherland  is  the  author  or  the  hero — 
exactly — of  any  song;  yet  however  well-known  his  judicial 
decisions  may  come  to  be,  I  suspect  that  by  many  here  his  name 
will  be  remembered  best  as  standing  in  that  famous  snatch  of 
rhythm,  that  bit  of  musical  libel,  in  which  a  worthy  officer  of 
Wesleyan  is  traduced  as 

"The  man  that  cussed,  the  man  that  swore, 
The  man  that  kicked  in  Sutherland's  door." 

I  introduce  to  you,  as  a  man  who  since  then  has  shown  remark- 
able ability  in  opening  all  doors  that  lead  to  honorable  and 
deserved  success,  Hon.  Arthur  E.  Sutherland,  of  the  Class  of 
'85,  Judge  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  State  of  New  York. 

JUDGE  ARTHUR  EUGENE  SUTHERLAND. 
Town  and  Gown. 

MR.  TOAST-MASTER :  An  acquaintance  of  mine  compared 
one  of  the  political  parties,  which  one  of  course  I  will 
not  say,  to  alcohol,  because  it  kills  everything  living  and  pre- 
serves everything  dead.  And  however  unjust  such  a  judge- 
ment may  have  been,  the  college  which  expended  its  energies  in 


66  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

teaching  the  dead  languages  and  unchangeable  mathematics  used 
to  be  looked  upon  by  many  as  not  the  best  place  to  equip  a  man 
for  the  actual  affairs  of  life.  You  will  remember  that  Mr.  Hux- 
ley criticised  with  severity  the  training  which  the  young  men  of 
his  time  were  receiving  in  the  great  universities  in  England,  and 
insisted  that  the  laws  of  nature  which  were  supposed  to  be  taught 
should  be  recognized  as  including  not  only  things  and  their  forces 
but  men  and  their  ways.  But  the  laws  of  nature  as  now  taught 
in  the  modern  college  do  include  not  only  things  and  their  forces 
but  men  and  their  ways;  and  such  is  the  life  and  work  of  the 
college  of  to-day  that  its  graduates  are  believed  by  men  in  active 
business  to  be  the  best  equipped  of  all  men  to  enter  into  the 
constructive  work  of  the  world. 

Wesleyan  men  congratulate  each  other  upon  the  intimate 
relation  between  the  life  of  this  college  and  affairs  outside. 
Our  3^oung  men  who  have  won  honors  for  Wesleyan  in  the 
intercollegiate  debates  have  dealt  with  questions  of  present 
moment  and  supreme  importance;  the  very  questions  which  are 
moving  the  world: — and  they  have  discussed  these  questions 
with  superior  skill  and  insight.  I  recall  with  pleasure  the  fact 
that  at  the  graduation  exercises  one  year  ago  the  two  young  men 
who  had  taken  the  highest  rank  in  their  class  chose  as  the  sub- 
jects of  their  orations  themes  which  indicated  that  their  college 
life  had  not  been  monastic,  but  that  their  interest  and  sympathies 
had  been  directed  toward  the  men  of  to-day  and  their  ways. 
One  spoke  upon  the  life  and  work  of  a  great  labor  leader, 
and  the  other  upon  the  importance  of  extending  the  law  afford- 
ing protection  to  employees  in  the  industrial  establishments  and 
upon  the  railways  of  the  country.  These  are  interesting  signs 
of  the  times:  and  so  the  Town  and  Gown,  and  the  old  dis- 
tinctions of  days  when  the  dons  and  the  preceptors  governed  the 
men  in  the  college  who  were  exempt  from  ordinary  relations  and 
responsibilities,  have  gone  by,  and  the  college  of  to-day  partakes 
of  and  contributes  to  the  throbbing  life  of  the  world. 

Success  in  life  is  determined  not  alone  by  what  we  know,  but 
surely  as  much  by  what  we  are:  and  highest  of  all  the  oppor- 
tunities which  are  found  in  the  smaller  New  England  colleges 
of  to-day  we  must  place  the  associations  which  the  under- 
graduate may  enjoy  with  the  men  of  the  Faculty  such  as  we  have 
here  to-day. 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  (>y 

You  remember  Hawthorne's  story  of  The  Great  Stone  Face. 
Upon  the  side  of  a  mountain  outlined  against  the  sky  the  rocks 
had  been  thrown  together  in  such  a  position  that  from  the  valley 
they  resembled  the  features  of  a  human  countenance,  and  a  face 
was  there  to  be  seen  perfect  in  its  outline  and  noble  in  dignity,  and 
the  tradition  was  that  some  time  a  child  would  be  born  in  that  val- 
ley who  would  grow  up  to  look  like  the  great  stone  face  and  who 
would  be  the  noblest  personage  of  his  time.  And  one  day  back 
to  that  valley  returned  a  man  who  had  gone  forth  in  his  youth 
and  had  made  a  great  fortune,  and  the  people  said  at  first, 
"  This  must  be  he  for  whom  we  have  been  looking ;"  but  he 
had  the  face  of  the  miser.  Then  a  general  came  back  who  had 
won  great  victories,  and  they  said,  "  This  may  be  the  one  that 
is  to  come ;"  but  he  was  not  the  one :  and  a  poet  came,  and  lis- 
tening to  his  verse  they  said,  "  Perhaps  he  is  the  one  that  is 
to  look  like  the  great  stone  face ;"  but  no,  it  was  the  boy  that 
stayed  there  in  the  valley  and  looked  upon  that  face  day  by 
day,  and  longed  to  be  like  it;  it  was  he  who  grew  up  to  be 
noble  and  strong  and  majestic  like  the  face  upon  the  mountain 
side;  and  when  age  came  upon  him  the  people  of  the  valley  all 
said  with  one  voice,  "  Behold,  this  is  he  who  was  to  appear." 

And  so  the  young  men  that  are  here  to-day  and  those  that 
are  to  come,  not  only  seeing  day  by  day  their  instructors,  learned 
men  of  broad  sympathies,  of  high  purpose,  of  noble  character, 
but  living  in  close  association  with  them,  partaking  of  their 
thought, — these  younger  men  growing  into  the  likeness  of  their 
exemplars  shall  go  forth  equipped  not  only  with  learning  but 
possessed  of  character  to  take  up  the  duties  of  life  and  to  win 
the  laurels  of  well-doing. 

t 
The  Toast-master: 

An  Englishman  travelling  by  rail  the  other  day  through  the 
state  of  Pennsylvania,  found  the  car  growing  very  dark,  and  as 
the  gloom  seemed  to  continue  a  good  while,  he  asked  his  neigh- 
bor, "  Will  you  tell  me,  sir,  what  is  this  long  tunnel  we  are  pass- 
ing through  ?"  "  Tunnel !"  was  the  reply,  "  this  ain't  no  tunnel ; 
this  is  Pittsburg."  But  there  are  some  very  brilliant  things  in 
Pittsburg;  and  it  was  only  three  days  ago  I  was  told  in  a  letter 
from  a  resident  of  that  city,  that  the  most  brilliant  preacher  there 
was  Dr.  Daniel  Dorchester. 


68  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

I  believe  some  of  our  alumni  have  been  a  little  restive  because 
now  and  then  a  remote  and  ignorant  rustic  would  speak  of 
Wesleyan  University  as  a  theological  institution — in  spite  of  the 
vigorous  efforts  of  the  athletic  teams  to  dispel  that  illusion.  But 
I,  for  one,  hope  the  day  is  far  distant  when  Wesleyan  shall  not 
send  out  every  year  some  able  men  to  enter  the  Christian  min- 
istry. For,  when  all  is  said,  it  is  still  true  that  theology  is  the 
scientia  scientiarum,  inviting  and  taxing  the  best  thought  of  the 
world.  And  it  is  still  true  that,  at  the  present  moment,  the  one 
place  where  the  power  of  the  orator  has  not  declined  or  dimin- 
ished is  the  pulpit.  The  one  profession  to-day  calls  for  the  union 
of  the  deepest  thought  with  the  most  persuasive  power  of  speech, 
for  the  noblest  service  to  mankind,  is  the  Christian  ministry. 

I  call  upon  the  Rev.  Daniel  Dorchester,  Jr.,  of  the  Class  of 
'74,  to  respond  to  the  toast,  "Wesleyan  in  the  Church." 

REV.  DANIEL  DORCHESTER,  JR. 
Wesleyan  in  the  Church. 

MR.  TOAST-MASTER:  Pittsburg,  as  has  been  suggested, 
is  a  very  smoky  place,  but  we  do  sometimes  see  the  stars 
there,  and  furthermore,  we  manufacture  the  telescopes  and  the 
spectroscopes  to  enable  others  to  see  and  study  the  heavenly 
bodies.  We  are  ever  looking  toward  the  light  as  people  passing 
through  a  tunnel  always  do,  and  this  leads  us  to  look  fondly  to 
the  land  whose  chief  products  are  men  and  schools. 

During  the  last  thirty  years,  I  have  felt  very  much  like  those 
who  have  visited  the  island  of  Mauritius.  Among  the  flowers 
there  is  one  of  such  rare  and  delicate  perfume  that  when  once 
breathed  it  is  never  forgotten.  No  matter  how  far  the  trav- 
eller may  roam  or  through  what  exciting  scenes,  the  memory 
of  that  flower  haunts  him  and  always  impels  him  to  revisit  the 
island  and  breathe  again  that  delicious  fragrance. 

Now  Wesleyan  has  for  us  something  of  the  charm  of  that 
flower.  We  have  all  been  busy  men,  we  have  travelled  far  and 
wide,  our  minds  and  hearts  have  gone  out  to  other  objects,  but 
the  sweet,  tender  memory  of  our  college  years  has  gone  with  us 
and  now  brings  us  again  to  these  dear  scenes.  Every  flower  is 
that  part  of  the  plant's  form  which  is  developed  in  the  moment 
of  its  intensest  life,  and  this  inner  rapture  is  marked  externally 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  69 

by  some  one  or  more  of  the  primary  colors.  Sometimes  this 
life  is  put  into  the  outer  sheath,  and  then  it  becomes  white  and 
pure,  full  of  strength  and  grace.  Sometimes  it  is  put  in  the 
young  leaves  under  the  blossom  and  they  become  scarlet  or 
purple.  And  sometimes  it  is  put  into  the  stalks  of  the  flower  and 
they  flush  blue.  But  in  every  case  the  presence  of  its  strongest 
life  is  asserted  by  characters  in  which  we  take  pleasure  and  which 
give  assurance  of  having  been  produced  by  a  Spirit  of  the  same 
kind  as  our  own. 

As  we  look  around  on  this  brilliant  company  to-day  and  think 
of  that  larger  company  of  distinguished  graduates,  both  living 
and  dead,  we  behold  the  flowering  of  Wesleyan's  intenser  life 
and  the  primary  colors  of  noble  character  in  the  various  pro- 
fessions and  vocations. 

It  devolves  upon  me  to  speak  of  this  intenser  life  of  Wesleyan 
in  the  church.  This  life  is  so  uniform,  it  is  so  all  pervasive,  it 
has  touched  with  so  much  power  and  beauty  those  in  humble 
appointments  as  well  as  those  in  the  Episcopacy  and  the  various 
official  positions,  that  it  seems  almost  invidious  for  me  to  make 
special  mention  of  any  one.  It  is  one  life,  one  character,  one 
purpose. 

We  are  glad,  however,  to  honor  among  Bishops,  Clark,  the  able 
author  and  organizer;  Baker,  judicial  and  wise;  Erastus  and 
Gilbert  Haven,  the  brilliant  editors  and  preachers;  Foss  and 
Ninde,  eminent  as  pastors  and  presidents;  Warren,  always  the 
gentleman  and  orator;  Mallalieu,  large  hearted  and  fervent; 
Keener  and  Hendrix,  conspicuous  leaders  in  the  church.  South ; 
and  Burt,  a  successful  organizer  of  Protestantism  under  the  very 
shadow  of  the  Vatican. 

During  the  last  quarter  of  a  century,  there  has  been  no  one 
whose  voice  has  been  heard  more  times  in  the  General  Conference, 
or  who  has  done  more  to  shape  legislation  than  a  son  of  Wes- 
leyan. Every  week  in  the  Great  Official  he  dispenses  to  a  goodly 
portion  of  the  church  its  meat  in  due  season.  It  is  strong  meat, 
with  an  unmistakable  flavor.  It  is  no  canned  stuff,  prepared  in 
an  Official  Packing-house.  There  is  sometimes  more  Mormon- 
ism  than  is  appetizing  and  digestible,  but  every  wise  and  well 
governed  appetite  selects  only  what  is  most  nourishing  in  even 
a  church  paper. 


70  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

Another  editor,  who  does  his  own  thinking  and  expresses  his 
thought  with  real  Uterary  charm,  is  my  classmate  Gilbert.  Little 
did  I  imagine  when,  in  old  South  College,  I  used  to  run  around 
with  him  on  my  shoulders,  that  he  would  ever  attain  his  present 
aldermanic  proportions  and  editorial  dignity. 

Methodism  has  no  theological  clearing  house,  although  every 
preachers'  meeting  aspires  at  times  to  become  one.  The  Metho- 
dist Review  takes  account  of  changes  in  religious  thought  and 
helps  clarify  and  establish  our  standards.  In  that  responsible 
editorial  chair  we  are  glad  to  see  our  cultured,  urbane  and  dis- 
cerning Kelley. 

I  do  not  like  to  poach  upon  the  preserve  of  the  next  speaker, 
but  I  should  like  to  speak  of  an  eminent  minister  and  educator, 
whose  stalwart  form  and  strong  personality  I  ever  associate 
with  Wesleyan, — ^Joseph  Cummings.  Some  of  us  fondly  recall 
how  helpful  he  was  as  a  teacher.  Northwestern  owes  him  a  great 
debt  of  gratitude  for  his  wise  leadership  during  one  of  the  trying 
periods  of  her  existence.  There  is  another  college  President  who 
was  called  from  a  successful  pastorate  to  establish  a  university 
under  the  shadow  of  Harvard.  While  it  is  true  of  no  one  that 
he  has  taken  all  knowledge  for  his  province,  it  may  be  said  that 
the  author  of  "  Paradise  Found  "  has  made  considerable  progress 
in  that  direction.  With  Reed  at  Dickinson,  with  Welch  in  the 
heart  of  Ohio,  with  Harris  at  Northwestern  and  her  other  sons 
in  so  many  schools  and  colleges,  Wesleyan  owns  a  goodly  portion 
of  this  country  educationally. 

What  a  power  Wesleyan  has  been  in  the  pastorate!  I  shall 
not  single  out  any  one  for  purposes  of  special  eulogy.  Wesleyan 
has  a  score  of  ministers,  who  in  the  sublimity  of  their  aims  and 
the  perfection  of  their  spiritual  striving  are  most  deserving  of 
honor.  She  has  sent  her  sons  into  almost  every  Conference  of 
this  country,  and  into  the  far  off  mission  fields,  and  they  are 
there  to-day  making  history  and  bringing  strength  and  joy  to 
many  struggling  souls.  After  all,  what  is  great,  what  is  small, 
in  human  life,  and  how  superior  to  all  of  our  distinctions  are 
spiritual  magnitudes! 

Among  the  many  characteristics  of  Wesleyan's  contribution 
of  intenser  life  to  the  church,  I  shall  speak  of  but  one.  Wesleyan 
has  always  taught  her  sons  to  use  their  heads  in  religion  as  in 
everything  else.     They  are  not  like  St.  Alban,  whose  statue  is 


JOSEPH  CUM  MINGS 


UNIVERSITY 

OF 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  71 

in  an  English  church.  There  he  stands  amidst  most  pious  sur- 
roundings with  his  superfluous  head  in  his  hands.  Neither  are 
they  Hke  the  two  deacons  of  whom  Dr.  James  M.  King  told  me. 
He  went  one  Sunday  afternoon  to  hear  Dr.  Hall  preach.  All 
through  the  sermon  these  two  deacons  were  fast  asleep.  At  the 
close  of  the  service  one  said  to  the  other,  "  That  was  a  fine  ser- 
mon the  Doctor  gave  us  to-day."  "  Yes,"  answered  the  other, 
"  The  Doctor  always  does  well."  We  were  never  taught  here 
to  regard  the  "  torpor  of  assurance  "  as  a  means  of  grace. 

There  are  those  who  picture  the  higher  criticism  as  a  monster  of 
frightful  mien.  But  Wesleyan  men  as  a  rule  have  regarded  it 
with  calm,  unquailing  eyes.  There  is  a  story  of  a  wag  in  a  country 
town,  who  once  made  a  wager  that  he  would  break  up  a  circus 
and  menagerie.  Accordingly,  when  the  rustic  crowd  had  duly 
inspected  the  animals  and  were  seated  around  the  arena  eagerly 
awaiting  the  entrance  of  the  clown  and  the  bareback  riders,  this 
wag  rushed  into  the  ring  shouting:  "Ladies  and  gentlemen; 
save  yourselves,  the  Gyascutus  has  broke  loose."  A  dreadful 
panic  followed.  The  crowd  surged  out  of  the  tent  in  hot  haste 
and  scattered  in  every  direction.  Aftef  awhile,  noticing  that  there 
was  nothing  in  pursuit,  one  turned  around  and  said,  "What  is 
a  Gyascutus  anyway  ?"  A  similar  wild  cry  has  been  heard  in  the 
church.  "Higher  criticism  has  broke  loose.  Save  yourselves 
and  the  faith  once  delivered  to  the  saints."  But  Wesleyan  men 
have  not  been  stampeded.  They  have  done  what  Marcus  Dods 
said  the  English  people  are  doing.  A  timorous  American  once 
asked  the  Doctor  what  was  being  done  to  oppose  the  higher 
criticism.  "Nothing,"  he  answered.  "We  are  going  on  saving 
souls.". 

One  of  Wesleyan's  graduates  has  been  under  fire.  It  is  a  pity 
that  one  so  scholarly,  so  pure  and  Christian  as  Professor  Mitchell 
should  have  been  the  target  of  such  low  criticisms.  It  is  a 
shame  that  he  was  not  left  free  to  pursue  his  researches  when 
"the  marks  of  the  Lord  Jesus  are  upon  him."  It  is  a  poor  sort 
of  religion  which  is  endangered  by  what  any  man  may  or  may 
not  say  as  to  what  did  or  did  not  happen  in  the  "world  before 
Abraham."  We  all  have  a  great  deal  to  learn  in  the  matter  of 
toleration.  The  larger  the  church  grows,  the  more  tolerant 
it  must  become  in  doubtful  matters  in  order  to  preserve  the 


72  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

respect  of  men.  Where  there  is  no  vision,  no  reaching  forward 
to  the  truth  to  be  revealed,  the  church  sinks  Hke  lead. 

Wesleyan  has  never  encouraged  a  brilliant  denial  of  sacred 
things.  She  realizes  that  the  mind  that  denies  and  drifts,  never 
finding  any  holding  ground  where  it  can  anchor,  soon  loses  the 
power  to  believe,  and  its  finer  energies  die.  But  doubt  that  is 
living,  that  cries  out  for  certainty,  and  will  not  rest  until  it  finds 
it,  is  a  servant  of  God,  to  bring  truth  into  the  soul. 

In  conclusion,  let  me  say  that  Wesleyan  has  always  been 
mindful  of  the  fact  that  religion  should  be  like  the  tree  in  the 
Garden  of  Eden, — "pleasant  to  the  eye,  good  for  food,"  and 
bearing  the  fruits  of  a  large  and  genial  humanity,  as  well  as 
those  of  austere  piety.  The  church  should  be  what  Edmund 
Burke  declared  society  to  be ;  "A  partnership  in  all  art,  a  part- 
nership in  all  science  and  in  every  perfection." 

Never  more  than  on  an  occasion  like  this,  when  we  are  sur- 
rounded by  the  noble  living  and  fondly  recall  the  noble  dead, 
when  we  behold  the  promise  of  enriched  life  in  those  who  are  to 
follow,  never  do  we  more  fully  realize  that  the  church  universal 
is  a  "partnership  between  those  who  are  living,  those  who  are 
dead,  and  those  who  are  to  be  born."  As  I  think  of  the  church 
and  Wesleyan  going  on  unchanged  amid  all  the  changes,  flour- 
ishing while  the  workers  pass  away,  I  am  reminded  of  the  words 
of  a  monk  who  was  a  guide  to  a  famous  painter  when  he  visited 
the  Escurial  in  Spain.    They  came  at  last  to  a  glorious  work, 

"Our  Lord's  last  supper,  beautiful  as  when  first 
The  appropriate  picture,  fresh  from  Titian's  hand 
Graced  the  refectory;    and  there,  while  both 
Stood  with  eyes  fixed  upon  that  masterpiece, 
The  hoary  father  in  the  stranger's  ear 
Breathed  out  these  words :  Here  daily  do  we  sit 
Thanks  given  to  God  for  daily  bread,  and  here 
Pondering  the  mischiefs  of  these  restless  times 
And  thinking  of  my  brethren,  dead,  dispersed, 
Or  changed  and  changing,  I  not  seldom  gaze 
Upon  this  solemn  company,  unmoved 
By  shock  of  circumstance,  or  lapse  of  years, 
Until  I  cannot  but  believe  that  they, 
They  are  in  truth  the  substance,  we  the  shadows." 

The  Toast-master  : 

Our  next  toast  is  **The  Teaching  Profession."  If  I  mistake 
not,  the  conception  of  the  teacher's  profession  has  developed 


JOHN    WESLEY   BEACH 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  73 

somewhat  in  recent  years.  The  venerable  tale  of  Mark  Hopkins 
on  the  end  of  a  log  hardly  expresses  the  present  ideal  of  the 
teacher's  requirements.  To  be  sure,  if  the  work  of  the  teacher 
has  gained  in  intension  it  has  lost  in  extension.  The  professor 
of  to-day  is  no  longer  the  encyclopaedic  man  of  the  past 
generation.  Why,  I  myself — and  I  hope  no  one  will  venture 
to  accuse  me  of  being  an  old  man — I  myself  have  taught,  and  in 
Wesleyan  University,  rhetoric,  logic,  ethics,  metaphysics,  evi- 
dences, history,  Greek  and  Browning.  (Professor  Van  Vleck 
never  would  consent  that  I  should  teach  mathematics.)  But  your 
modern  teacher  cannot  be  so  broad  a  man  as  that. 

And  then,  the  teacher  of  to-day  teaches  some  subjects  the 
very  names  of  which  would  scandalize  our  fathers.  What  do 
you  suppose  they  would  have  said,  for  instance,  of  "Physio- 
logical Psychology"?  I  can  imagine  their  alarmed  sneer,  "You 
might  as  well  say  'corporeal  spirituality.' "  And  I  can  imagine 
the  look  of  puzzled  indignation  on  the  face  of  one  of  those  old 
philosophers  if  he  should  be  introduced  to  the  psychological 
lecture-room  and  see  there,  instead  of  a  bust  of  Plato  and  a  shelf 
of  goodly  tomes,  an  array  of  glass  jars  filled  with  pickled  human 
brains  in  various  stages  of  sanity,  and  an  elaborate  mechanism 
for  determining  how  far  you  move  your  eye-ball  in  reading  a  line 
of  Walt  Whitman's  poetry,  or  how  long  it  takes  you  to  make  up 
what  you  call  your  mind  to  take  your  hand  off  a  red-hot  stove. 
"And  has  divine  philosophy,"   I  hear  him  say,   "come  to  this !" 

And  yet,  I  don't  know.  There  are  some  difficulties  in  the 
opposite  or  introspective  method.  I  was  reading  the  other  day 
in  a  recent  book  on  the  Will — I  do  sometimes  unbend  my  mind 
over  philosophy — and  I  came  upon  a  statement  that  seemed  to 
me  interesting  and  impressive.  It  was  this :  "The  Ego  as  Will, 
being  undetermined  is  determined  to  be  self-determined,  through 
the  undetermined."  Now  I  guess  that  is  true.  The  author  said  it 
was.  And  it  had  a  certain  fascination  for  me,  a  kind  of  poetic 
charm;  not  "musical  as  Apollo's  lute"  exactly,  but  with  a 
haunting  rhythm  like  it — 

"The  Ego  as  Will, 
Being  undetermined,  is  determined 
To  be  self-determined,  through  the  undetermined." 

And  yet,  I  must  say,  that  for  the  average  mind  it  seems  a  little 
too  purely  abstract.     I  think,  as  Mr.  Mill  used  to  say,  it  ought 


74  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

to  be  "clothed  in  circumstance"  somehow,  applied  to  a  concrete 
case — say  of  a  darkey  and  a  watermelon.  "The  Ego  as  Will" — 
the  darkey — "is  determined  to  be  self-determined,  through  the 
undetermined" — the  watermelon.  Probably  it  means  something 
like  that.  My  point  is,  that  philosophic  teaching  can  be  too 
introspective  and  metaphysical,  as  well  as  too  materialistic  and 
mechanical. 

Now  my  friend  Professor  Judd  is,  they  tell  me,  an  excellent 
teacher  of  this  most  difficult  subject.  Physiological  Psychology. 
He  really  does  know  a  number  of  things,  too,  outside  his  depart- 
ment ;  and  inside  his  department,  he  knows  all  there  is  at  present 
to  be  known,  and — what  is  perhaps  a  yet  higher  compliment — he 
doesn't  know  anything  that  is  not  to  be  known.  Professor 
Charles  H.  Judd,  '94,  of  Yale  University,  will  respond  to  the  toast 
"The  Teaching  Profession." 

PROFESSOR  CHARLES  HUBBARD  JUDD. 
The  Teaching  Profession. 

MR.  TOAST-MASTER:  When  I  accepted  your  invitation 
to  be  present  on  this  occasion  and  to  represent  those 
members  of  Wesley an's  alumni  who  are  engaged  in  the  pro- 
fession of  teaching,  I  did  so  with  the  thought  clearly  in  mind 
that  the  teaching  profession  engages  the  services  of  more 
Wesleyan  alumni  than  does  any  other  profession.  On  turn^ 
ing  to  Professor  Nicolson's  authoritative  volume  on  this  matter, 
I  found  that  according  to  the  first  page  of  statistics  I  was 
quite  right.  On  the  second  page,  however.  Professor  Nicolson 
had  succeeded  by  a  careful  manipulation  of  the  figures  in  showing 
that  the  clergy  outnumber  the  members  of  the  teaching  profes- 
sion. This  he  did  by  including  certain  persons  of  doubtful  char- 
acter in  the  list  of  the  clergy, — persons  who  are  members  of 
conferences  but  have  abandoned  their  ministerial  work  for  what 
is  in  most  cases  a  distinctly  educational  calling.  In  view  of  Pro- 
fessor Nicolson's  methods  of  treating  the  facts,  I  feel  justified 
myself  in  using  other  facts  to  establish  the  claim  which  I 
originally  made  for  the  greater  importance  of  the  teaching  profes- 
sion. As  I  examine  the  lists  of  Wesleyan  classes,  I  find  many  of 
the  names  in  the  later  classes  repeating  the  names  of  the  members 
of  the  earlier  classes,  and  I  am  convinced  that  there  is  many  a 
Wesleyan  alumnus  who  is  engaged  in  teaching  though  his  name 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  75 

does  not  figure  in  Professor  Nicolson's  table.  Indeed,  the  uni- 
versality of  the  teaching  profession  among  Wesleyan  men  can  be 
paralleled,  I  think,  only  by  one  period  in  the  world's  history.  I 
remember  that  Professor  Conn  used  to  say  to  us  in  his  class  in 
biology,  that  there  was  a  period  in  the  world's  history  long  ago 
when  education  was  very  much  more  universal  than  it  is  even  now. 
"In  that  far  oif  period  all  the  members  of  the  species,"  he  would 
say,  "were  educated  in  the  higher  brandies." 

The  universality  of  the  profession  of  teaching  does  not,  of 
course,  make  it  impossible  for  some  individuality  to  appear  among 
the  members  of  this  profession.  Indeed,  there  are  evidences, 
as  we  examine  the  individuals  among  the  Wesleyan  alumni  who 
are  teachers,  that  they  fulfill  all  of  the  requirements  generally 
imposed  by  popular  tradition  upon  this  profession.  There  is  the 
absent-minded  man.  We  are  told  of  one  Wesleyan  alumnus  who, 
on  a  certain  occasion,  entered  a  street  car  and  seeing  a  friend 
handed  him  the  nickel  and  shook  hands  vigorously  with  the  con- 
ductor. There  are  other  members  of  our  Wesleyan  group  who 
fulfill  the  requirements  of  the  German  definition  of  a  professor 
as  a  "disputatious  person  who  always  holds  an  opinion  opposite 
to  that  which  was  last  expressed."  But  I  shall  make  no  mention 
of  those  who  show  these  marked  personal  characteristics,  nor 
is  it  my  intention  to  deal  in  any  general  way  with  all  of  the  diffi- 
culties in  individual  work  or  general  administration  that  confront 
the  teachers  of  Wesleyan. 

That  there  are  so  many  of  us  engaged  in  the  teaching  profes- 
sion can,  I  think,  be  attributed  directly  to  the  fact  that  Wesleyan 
has  always  furnished  in  her  Faculty  examples  that  inspire  the 
students  while  here  and  the  alumni  after  their  graduation  to 
engage  in  the  art  of  instruction.  When  we  come  back  on  these 
occasions,  we  are  justified  in  setting  aside  some  of  the  ordinary 
formalities  of  personal  intercourse  and  in  telling  these  men  very 
frankly  how  large  appreciation  we  have  of  the  examples  which 
they  have  given  us.  Some  sixteen  years  ago  my  class  came  to 
college,  and  while,  of  course,  the  exact  figures  do  not  fit  many  of 
the  rest  of  you,  I  am  sure  that  the  statement  which  I  make  for 
sixteen  years  ago  will  hold  equally  well  for  other  periods. 
Wesleyan  had  at  that  time  a  very  remarkable  body  of  teachers. 
They  were  remarkable  in  many  respects — remarkable  as  class 
instructors,  as  contributors  to  the  world's  science,  and  as  progres- 


76  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

sive  organizers  of  university  life.  Through  their  clear  visions 
we  saw  many  of  the  great  truths  of  philosophy,  literature  and 
science.  We  learned  at  their  feet  to  appreciate  the  great  things 
that  men  of  all  generations  have  written  down  in  books,  and  we 
followed  their  steps  amid  the  wonders  of  nature  and  life.  We 
carried  away  not  only  intellectual  inspirations  but  also  the  memory 
of  the  examples  of  devotion  to  public  service,  which  made  it 
extremely  easy  for  Wesleyan  alumni  of  that  period,  as  of  every 
other  period,  to  enter  upon  the  profession  whose  primary  function 
is  the  improvement  of  others  and  the  cultivation  of  general  scien- 
tific knowledge.  This  seems  to  me  to  furnish  in  a  very  large 
number  of  cases  a  complete  explanation  of  the  devotion  of 
Wesleyan  men  to  the  profession  of  teaching. 

And  now  there  are  two  special  matters  to  which  I  wish  to  make 
reference.  First,  let  me  bring  back  to  your  attention  the  fact 
that  the  teaching  profession  is  rapidly  becoming  a  specialized 
calling  requiring  specific  preparation,  and  I  find  to  my  regret 
that  Wesleyan  is  doing  relatively  very  little  for  the  cultivation 
of  the  specialized  scientific  preparation  for  school  work.  It  is  no 
longer  possible  in  this  country,  ^nd  it  has  long  been  impossible 
in  the  older  countries  of  Europe,  for  anyone  to  engage  in  ele- 
mentary and  secondary  school  teaching  without  some  knowledge 
of  the  history  of  educational  institutions  and  of  the  methods  of 
instruction  in  elementary  and  secondary  school  subjects.  I  see 
no  reason  why  a  college  should  not  ofiFer  such  courses  as  these 
when  it  can  be  definitely  shown  that  a  large  body  of  the  graduates 
of  the  institution  are  to  enter  upon  the  profession  for  which  these 
subjects  are  the  special  preparation.  If  sufficient  preparation 
is  not  provided,  students  will  nevertheless  take  up  teaching  and 
they  will  find  it  necessary  to  spend  a  period  of  years  in  experiment 
and  wasteful  dissipation  of  their  energies,  gaining  a  kind  of 
preparation  which  might  have  been  anticipated,  at  least  in  part, 
by  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  institutions  of  other  peoples  and 
the  practices  of  their  educators.  There  is  no  reason  why  such 
educational  work  should  not  be  undertaken  by  the  Wesleyan 
Faculty  without  any  large  additional  demand  upon  the  profes- 
sional or  material  resources  of  the  college. 

There  is  another  matter  which  it  is  appropriate  for  us  to  discuss 
in  this  presence  where  the  alumni  and  the  governing  board  of  the 
University  are  met  together.     That  matter  is  the  compensation  of 


IN. 

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WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  TJ 

the  members  of  the  Wesleyan  Faculty.  You  cannot  leave  the  pro- 
fessional salaries  in  this  institution  in  the  condition  in  which  they 
now  stand  and  continue  to  secure  the  services  of  such  men  as  have 
always  served  Wesleyan.  I  think  we  are  all  convinced  of  the  truth 
of  this  statement.  The  difficulty  is  in  making  any  movement  to 
change  the  situation.  We  appreciate  the  work  of  the  members  of 
the  Wesleyan  Faculty,  but  appreciation  is  not  the  substantial  kind 
of  pay  which  makes  it  possible  for  them  to  go  on  with  their  work. 
The  matter  of  instructors'  salaries  is,  of  course,  a  question  with 
which  other  institutions  than  Wesleyan  have  also  had  to  deal. 
Some  of  these  institutions  have  been  fortunate  in  adding  to  the 
compensation  given  to  their  instructors  the  promise  of  a  pension 
in  old  age.  I  do  not  wish  to  inject  into  this  discussion  any  radical 
suggestions  or  to  appear  to  advocate  a  scramble  for  the  spoils, 
if  such  they  are  to  be  called,  of  the  rich  endowment  which  has 
been  given  to  certain  American  institutions  for  the  pensioning  of 
their  teachers.  It  is  not  for  me  to  decide  whether  this  institution 
is  to  continue  to  debar  its  teachers  from  enjoyment  of  this  general 
fund  by  an  adherence  to  its  denominational  affiliations.  Of  one 
thing,  however,  I  am  certain, — if  a  change  is  not  made  of  such 
a  character  as  to  provide  for  the  participation  of  Wesleyan's 
teachers  in  the  general  fund,  we  are  under  obligation  to  see  to  it 
that  a  special  fund  is  provided  at  Wesleyan  that  will  accomplish 
the  same  result.  And  the  matter  of  pensions  is  by  no  means  the 
only  matter  that  needs  immediate  consideration.  Wesleyan  is 
in  competition  with  a  great  number  of  other  institutions,  some  of 
which  are  competing  educational  institutions,  some  of  which  are 
practical  institutions  needing  the  services  of  professionally  trained 
men.  In  order  to  maintain  a  proper  standard  in  the  face  of  this 
competition  it  will  certainly  be  necessary  for  Wesleyan  to  be 
prepared  to  make  higher  bids  for  the  services  of  first  rate  men. 

These  two  points,  then,  seem  to  me  to  represent  the  most  urgent 
needs  of  Wesleyan's  teaching  profession.  First,  there  is  a 
demand  for  more  specific  preparation  of  those  graduates  who  are 
to  serve  the  community  and  the  state  in  the  profession  of  teaching 
outside  the  institution  and,  second,  there  is  an  urgent  demand  for 
the  better  compensation  of  those  who  teach  within  her  walls.  If 
these  two  lines  of  consideration  can  be  seriously  impressed  upon 
those  who  have  the  government  of  the  institution  in  hand,  I  feel 
that  much  can  be  accomplished  to  the  advantage  of  that  large  body 


78  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

of  alumni  whom  I  have  the  honor  to  represent,  that  body  of  men 
and  women  who  are  members  at  once  of  Wesleyan's  alumni  and 
of  the  teaching  profession. 

The  Toast-master: 

Our  speakers  thus  far  this  afternoon  have  all  been  alumni  of 
Wesleyan.  But  there  are  others.  The  gentleman  who  is  to 
respond  to  the  last  toast  is  not  an  alumnus  of  Wesleyan — not 
quite.  Our  Alma  Mater,  however,  is  in — but,  as  the  novelists 
say,  Let  me  not  anticipate.  I  may  venture  to  make  reference  to 
him  under  a  veil  of  decent  Latin  as  an  alumnus  eras  naturus. 

My  friend  Professor  Stuart  is  a  paradox.  He  is  a  theological 
professor ;  and  yet  he  is  a  poet  and  a  musician — I  have  heard  him 
sing.  He  is  a  Scotchman ;  but  he  is  a  man  of  wit  and  humor. 
He  unites  in  his  own  person  all  the  courtliness,  the  charm,  the 
seductive  grace  of  the  royal  family  whose  name  he  bears,  without 
any  of  their  weaknesses.  In  fact,  just  imagine  the  last  royal 
Qiarles  Stuart,  who  "never  said  a  foolish  thing  and  never  did 
a  wise  one,"  returned  to  earth  again,  repentant  now  of  all  his 
follies,  and  as  wise  in  heart  and  deed  as  witty,  in  short  changed 
into  the  right  sort  of  a  Methodist — and  you  have  him  here 
before  you  in  this  later  and  better  Charles  Stuart.  He  would 
naturally  choose,  as  the  subject  of  his  toast,  the  title  of  that 
famous  book  by  the  great  and  good  prelate  whom  in  his  life- 
time he  treated  so  shabbily.  We  shall  be  glad  to  hear  what  he 
has  to  say  now  about  Jeremy  Taylor's  Liberty  of  Prophesying — 
or  anybody  else's.  I  introduce  Professor  Charles  M.  Stuart,  of 
the  Garrett  Biblical  Institute,  who  will  respond  to  the  toast,  "The 
Liberty  of  Prophesying." 


PROFESSOR  CHARLES  MACAULAY  STUART. 
The  Liberty  of  Prophesying. 

MR.  TOAST-MASTER,  LADIES  AND  GENTLEMEN : 
When  Professor  Winchester  sent  me  the  invitation  to 
speak  at  this  banquet,  I  wrote  and  asked  him  if  it  were  expected 
that  I  should  say  something  sensible.  To  which  he  replied,  "Oh 
no,  the  committee  have  engaged  me  for  that;  what  we  want  of 
you  is  to  be  funny."     And  yet  he  himself  has  told  you  that  I  am  a 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  79 

Scotchman,  of  that  sober  and  unyielding  race  which,  so  it  has  been 
said,  get  a  joke  into  their  system  as  the  result  of  a  surgical  opera- 
tion. I  recall  that  it  was  said  of  one  of  my  compatriots  that  after 
a  lecture  by  Artemus  Ward  he  made  occasion  to  say  to  the  lec- 
turer :  "You  are  an  extraordinarily  funny  man.  There  were  two 
or  three  times  to-night  that  I  came  very  near  laughing  at  ye."  If 
I  am  not  permitted  to  be  sensible,  and  if  I  cannot  be  funny,  it  only 
remains  for  me  to  be  theological.  Hence  my  topic,  "The  Liberty 
of  Prophesying."  And  I  desire  to  say  in  advance  that  I  propose 
to  take  a  great  deal  of  liberty  in  my  prophesying.  It  has  had  a 
beginning ;  it  can  not  very  well  escape  a  middle ;  and  I  hope  for 
an  ending;  but  the  relation  of  these  to  each  other  you  may  not 
see ;  indeed  it  is  an  open  question  whether  any  relation  is  intended. 
But  for  such  liberty  I  have  good  precedent.  When  Rowland  Hill 
was  preaching  in  Scotland,  he  was  told  by  some  of  his  hearers 
that  they  had  a  great  objection  to  his  kind  of  sermons  because 
there  were  no  clear  divisions  in  them.  Whereupon  on  the  Sunday 
following,  he  said,  "My  friends,  I  propose  to  treat  my  text  in 
three  distinct  divisions.  First,  I  will  go  around  about  my  text; 
secondly,  in  all  likelihood,  I  will  go  away  from  my  text;  and 
thirdly,  it  is  very  unlikely  that  I  shall  ever  return  to  it."  The 
"liberty  of  prophesying"  suggests  some  considerations  touching 
my  own  calling.  I  took  up  a  paper  the  other  day  and  found  one 
of  your  most  distinguished  New  England  college  presidents 
quoted  as  saying,  "The  modern  (theological)  seminary,  with  its 
atmosphere  of  docile  unreality,  turns  out  a  class  of  ministers  who 
can  comfort  a  few  sisters  weaker  than  themselves  and  that  is  all." 
Well,  it  is  something, — not  much  to  be  sure,  but  something,  to 
comfort  the  weak  sisters  ;  especially  if,  as  is  generally  the  case,  the 
weak  sisters  are  of  both  sexes,  and  have  just  weakness  in  common. 
The  self-reliant  Apostle  to  the  Gentiles  was  not  above  adjuring 
those  that  were  strong  to  bear  the  infirmities  of  the  weak,  remind- 
ing them  that  in  such  helpfulness  they  were  fulfilling  the  law  of 
Christ.  In  the  battle  of  life  the  strong  are  not  always  mindful 
of  their  privilege,  and  surely  it  is  a  saving  element  in  society  to 
have  in  the  church  a  class  who  have  this  as  a  special  commission. 
To  continue  my  quotation :  This  authority  declares  that  "the  man 
who  has  graduated  from  a  college  or  seminary  of  the  traditional 
type  is  useless  and  juiceless;  he  is  dead  the  day  he  graduates." 
I  was  very  much  struck  with  the  collocation  of  terms, — "useless 


8o  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

and  juiceless."  Perhaps  the  collocation  is  not  at  all  fortuitous — 
it  may  be  vital.  A  seminary  which  is  useless  can  attract  only 
"jays,"  and  "useless"  plus  the  "jay"  added  by  attraction  gives 
juiceless.  More  than  this,  if  he  is  dead  the  day  he  graduates,  we 
have  this  interesting  problem  before  us.  Dr.  Rice,  on  Sunday 
night  in  that  fine  address  of  his,  said  that  Wesleyan  University 
became  a  modern  school  in  1873.  From  this  it  follows  that  every 
minister  graduated  from  this  school  before  1873  was  dead  the  day 
he  graduated.  There  are  some  such  here,  and  you  are  dead,  but 
you  don't  know  it,  and  you  have  been  dead  all  these  years,  and 
have  been  walking  around  to  save  the  expenses  of  your  funeral. 
Well,  you  cannot  look  dead,  and  you  cannot  be  blamed  for  that, 
but  you  might  look  mortified. 

Seriously,  the  difficulty  is  here.  It  is  never  a  question  of  the 
seminary  at  all.  In  schools  and  training,  it  is  always  a  question 
of  the  man.  If  a  seminary  receives  a  live  man,  it  will  turn  him  out 
more  alive ;  if  it  receives  a  dead  man  it  is  not  to  be  blamed  if  it 
turns  out  a  deader  one.  All  the  reformers  were  graduates  of 
schools  of  the  traditional  type,  Luther  was  a  graduate  of  the 
theological  seminary  of  the  traditional  type,  and  if  you  ask  who 
are  the  men  who  have  made  the  most  lasting  impression  on  Ameri- 
can society  and  American  civilization,  you  can  name  three  out- 
standing figures, — Jonathan  Edwards,  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  and 
Horace  Bushnell,  every  one  of  them  a  graduate  of  the  school  of 
the  traditional  type.  So  you  see,  it  is  not  so  much  a  question  of 
the  material  the  seminary  turns  out  as  it  is  a  question  of  the 
material  which  the  seminary  receives. 

But  what  is  the  ground  of  objection  to  this  traditional  type? 
I  will  quote  again;  "Dead  languages,  the  deadest  of  the  dead, 
are  the  spinal  column  of  the  course.  The  student  must  be  taught 
the  exact  words  in  which  the  miraculous  and  final  revelation  was 
deposited." 

I  do  not  quite  like  the  tone  in  which  that  last  is  said.  There 
is  just  the  hint  of  a  sneer  in  regard  to  "the  miraculous  and  final 
revelation."  Out  Chicago  way  we  are  disposed  to  regard  the 
Bible  as  "the  miraculous  and  final  revelation."  To  be  sure,  we 
have  Mrs.  Eddy, — though  that  I  must  qualify, — we  have  only  long 
distance  connection  with  her.  And  you  know  it  takes  $4.75  to 
buy  a  copy  of  that  invaluable  book  through  which  we  receive  the 
Mary  Baker  Eddyfication  to  our  souls. 


S      0^ 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  8i 

It  is  quite  true  also  that  we  have  Dowie;  but  Dowieism  is 
hardly  a  revelation.  We  might  call  it  a  sort  of  empirical  specula- 
tion,— empirical  in  that  Dowie  experiments  on  every  man  he  can 
lay  his  hands  on ;  speculation  in  that  Dowie  finds  out  what  a  man 
is  worth  and  then  strikes  him  for  a  dollar  less.  Dowie  assumes 
the  role  of  Elijah  for  the  ''profit"  there  is  in  it. 

I  am  getting  away  from  my  subject  a  little.  You  remember  the 
other  part  of  the  criticism  was  about  the  dead  languages,  and  I 
want  to  say  a  word  about  that.  My  distinguished  predecessor  on 
the  program  had  something  to  say  about  the  dead  languages;  I 
would  like  to  have  a  word  about  them  also.  Why  are  they  dead  ? 
Of  course,  the  old  witticism  is,  because  they  have  been  over- 
studied,  studied  to  death.  No,  they  are  dead  because  they  are 
not  now  s|>oken  by  the  man  who  has  not  studied  them.  In  which 
case  we  can  prove  from  the  average  Freshman  that  English  is  a 
dead  language.  I  think  we  ought  to  get  a  modification  of  that 
phrase.  There  can  never  be  a  dead  language  in  which  a  living 
literature  is  embodied.  And  if  the  theological  student,  if  the 
preacher  is  to  be  the  interpreter  of  a  literature,  then  he  certainly 
ought  to  know  something  of  the  languages  in  which  that  litera- 
ture has  come  down  to  us.  It  is  in  virtue  of  this  very  desirable 
accomplishment  that  I  am  going  to  take  the  liberty  of  saying 
also  that  it  might  not  be  a  bad  thing  if  we  could  get  all  our  people 
not  only  to  go  to  church  but  also  to  study  Hebrew  and  Greek.  A 
very  intelligent  layman  happened  to  drop  into  church  one  Sunday 
morning,  and  he  came  home  and  said  to  his  wife.  "I  think  I 
shall  go  to  church  always  on  Sunday.  You  are  always  getting 
some  new  ideas  there.  I  went  to  church  this  morning  and  the 
preacher  was  telling  about  Sodom  and  Gomorrah  and  referred  to 
them  as  cities  by  the  Dead  Sea.  Do  you  know,"  he  added  '*I 
had  always  thought  of  them  as  man  and  wife."  A  popular  inter- 
est in  the  languages  of  the  Bible  would,  at  least,  give  a  new  relish 
for  the  study  of  its  literature  and  promote  a  desirable  intelligence 
about  its  surface  contents. 

And  now  just  one  other  word  as  to  the  criticism  of  this  scholar 
concerning  the  theological  seminary.  He  says  the  reason  why 
manly  men  do  not  come  into  the  church,  into  the  ministry,  is 
because  "we  cannot  get  any  creed  adjusted  to  the  modern  way  of 
thinking."  It  seems  to  me  that  this  is  reversing  the  proper  order 
of  things.  We  ought  to  be  concerned  not  so  much  with  a  creed 
6 


82  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

to  fit  the  man  or  to  save  him,  but  with  getting  the  man  to  justify 
a  creed,  any  creed.  This  is  the  difficulty.  Almost  any  sort  of  a 
creed  will  do  service  if  only  there  is  a  man  presenting  it.  Luther 
and  Calvin  had  narrow  creeds  upon  which  they  built  their  lives. 
I  have  not  the  slightest  particle  of  sympathy  with  Calvinism,  but 
there  are  worse  things  in  this  world  than  a  narrow  creed  and  a 
passion  for  righteousness.  So  far  as  I  know  them  the  theological 
seminaries  are  looking  for  men  to  justify  the  creed  and  we  let  the 
creed  very  largely  take  care  of  itself. 

It  is  also  said  that  these  young  men  are  not  coming  in  because 
they  find  the  church  is  restricting  them  in  the  matter  of  their 
intellectual  freedom.  Just  recall  to  your  minds  the  stories  which 
Dr.  Dorchester  and  Bishop  Foss  recited  to  you  to-day.  Do  you 
mean  to  tell  me  that  Stephen  Olin  ever  failed  to  bring  to  the 
church  the  thing  he  believed, — or  that  Willbur  Fisk  did,  or  that 
Bishop  Foss  did,  or  that  Bishop  Andrews  did  ?  You  know  better 
than  that.  One  of  the  strongest  and  one  of  the  ablest  liberalists 
of  the  modern  school,  and  one  of  your  own  professors  here.  Pro- 
fessor William  North  Rice, — did  he  feel  himself  restricted  in 
writing  his  book  on  religious  aspects  of  science?  You  know 
better.  It  is  quite  true,  we  have  had  some  heresy  trials.  They, 
however,  have  been  few.  And  if  you  investigate  these  heresy 
trials,  you  will  find  that  there  is  always  something  back  of  the 
teaching  involved.  It  is  not  always  or  altogether  a  question  of 
the  teaching,  sometimes  it  is  a  question  of  the  man  or  of  his 
method. 

But  suppose  it  to  be  true  that  the  church  is  engaged  in  this  work 
of  restricting  the  intellectual  freedom  of  the  modern  man.  Is 
there  any  more  glorious  warfare  to  which  a  young  man  can  be 
called  than  this  battling  for  intellectual  liberty  ?  Where  can  he  do 
it  to  better  advantage  than  in  the  church?  I  am  glad  to  be  able 
to  say  these  words  to  this  company;  it  is  to  this  you  are  called. 
Suppose  we  had  a  church  here  in  which  men  were  the  prepon- 
derating element,  trained  men,  thoughtful  men.  Suppose  they 
found  their  pastor  fighting  a  good  fight  for  intellectual  and  relig- 
ious freedom.  What  influence  would  it  have  upon  the  presiding 
elder  and  the  Bishop  if  these  men  were  lined  up  and  said,  "You 
keep  your  hands  off  our  man!"  It  would  practically  settle  the 
whole  question.     That  is  a  work  to  which  young  men  of  to-day 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  83 

are  called.  A  more  glorious  work,  a  more  glorious  calling  will 
never  be  opened  to  them ;  and  I  know  that  Wesleyan,  true  to  her 
traditions  of  the  past,  will  never  be  disloyal  to  such  a  call,  for 

He  never  learned  to  shun  a  fight 

Nor  on  a  good  cause  turn  his  back ; 

He  stands  by  till  the  fight  is  won, 

Whose  heart  thrills  to  the  Red  and  Black. 


TUESDAY   EVENING 


■^    OFTHE 

UNIVERSITY 


MARTIN   AUGUSTINE   KNAPP 


ADDRESS 
By  Martin  Augustine  Knapp 
Slrmt0p0rtat!0tt  atti  tombmatuin 

Mr.    President   Rice,    Members   of   the   Phi    Beta   Kappa 
Society,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen  : 

TO  take  so  prominent  a  place  in  the  exercises  which  celebrate 
this  notable  anniversary  is  at  once  an  honor  far  beyond  my 
desert  and  a  task  to  which  I  am  altogether  unequal.  It  is  an 
event  of  rare  and  peculiar  interest,  filled  with  memories  which 
excite  our  affectionate  pride  and  signally  prophetic  of  the  enlarg- 
ing career  and  increasing  beneficence  of  the  University  in  the 
years  to  come.  And  if  ever  I  coveted  the  gift  of  befitting  speech 
it  is  surely  at  this  moment  and  in  this  presence  that  I  might  be 
fortunate  enough  to  utter  some  word  worthy  of  the  dignity  and 
significance  of  this  occasion. 

We  are  so  constituted  that  each  of  us  looks  at  the  problems  of 
life  from  a  somewhat  different  standpoint.  The  opinions  we 
form,  the  principles  we  uphold,  the  policies  we  advocate,  are  all 
influenced  more  or  less  by  the  work  in  which  we  engage  and  the 
kindred  range  of  our  reflections.  It  is  natural,  therefore,  that 
I  should  find  the  origin  of  present-day  questions  in  the  facts  of 
modern  transportation  and  communication,  facts  that  have  trans- 
formed the  world  since  this  institution  was  founded,  and  that  I 
should  entertain  views,  perhaps  indulge  in  fancies,  which  those 
facts  suggest. 

The  primitive  man  traveled  on  foot  and  moved  his  scanty 
belongings  by  carrying  them  in  his  arms  or  on  his  back.  Even 
the  rude  vehicles  and  water-craft  which  he  eventually  learned  to 
construct  were  propelled  by  his  own  muscle,  and  we  can  only 
guess  how  long  it  was  before  he  obtained  any  other  motive  power 
for  the  transfer  of  his  person  or  his  property.  In  every  way  his 
life  was  meagre  and  isolated,  for  he  had  not  acquired  the  art  of 
writing,  and  intercourse  with  his  fellows  was  confined  to  the 


88  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

simplest  speech.  Outside  the  family  to  which  he  belonged,  or 
the  tribe  with  which  he  gathered,  he  had  no  community  of  inter- 
est, felt  no  friendship  and  desired  no  alliance.  His  associations 
and  his  activities  were  as  limited  as  his  means  of  conveyance. 

In  a  later  but  still  very  remote  period  there  came  a  great 
increase  of  motive  power  by  the  subjugation  of  animals,  and 
their  employment  for  transportation  on  land,  and  by  the  use  of 
sails  and  rudders  which  multiplied  many  times  the  efficiency  of 
water  carriage.  When  these  two  results  were  secured,  man  had 
added  to  his  own  bodily  powers  the  superior  strength  of  beasts 
of  burden  and  the  enormous  energy  derived  from  the  winds  of 
Heaven.  This  was  an  immense  advance  and  marked  the  begin- 
ning of  that  wonderful  civilization  which  slowly  followed.  The 
animal  kingdom  was  brought  into  service  for  the  various  func- 
tions of  land  distribution,  and  the  ship  which  could  be  sailed  and 
guided  made  every  water-way  subservient  to  man's  requirements. 
Sometime  in  this  period  also  he  learned  to  express  his  ideas  by 
symbols  or  written  words,  and  thus  was  enabled  to  transmit  his 
thoughts  by  the  same  agencies  that  transported  his  possessions. 

This  leads  to  a  fact  of  history  which  seems  to  me  not  merely 
significant  but  profoundly  impressive.  With  the  subjection  of 
animals  and  the  use  of  wind-propelled  vessels,  both  of  which 
achievements  reached  a  high  degree  of  perfection  in  the  unknown 
past,  the  means  of  transportation,  broadly  speaking,  remained 
unchanged  and  unaugmented  until  almost  down  to  the  present 
time,  hong  before  other  agencies  of  conveyance  were  dreamed 
of,  while  ox  and  horse,  oar  and  sail,  were  the  only  means  of 
transport,  the  race  had  occupied  most  of  the  habitable  globe  and 
reached  high  levels  of  national  greatness.  Strong  governments 
were  established,  vast  populations  engaged  in  varied  pursuits,  and 
opulent  cities  crowded  with  every  luxury.  The  institutions  of 
society  had  acquired  strength  and  permanence,  the  arts  of  leisure 
and  refinement  had  approached  the  limits  of  perfection,  and 
inductive  science  had  laid  firm  grasp  on  the  secrets  of  nature. 
Great  inventions  and  discoveries  had  widened  the  fields  of 
activity,  and  furnished  the  means  and  incentive  for  multiplied 
vocations.  In  a  word,  there  was  the  developed  and  splendid 
civilization  of  only  little  more  than  threescore  years  ago  before 
any  new  or  different  motive  jx)wer  was  practically  utilized  for 
production  or  distribution. 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  89 

And  the  suggestive  thought  to  me  is  that  this  immense  and 
complex  organism,  with  all  its  accumulations  of  wealth  and  wis- 
dom, its  diversified  employments,  its  agriculture,  manufactures, 
business  affairs,  financial  systems,  commercial  and  political  rela- 
tions, civil  and  social  order — its  very  life  of  potency — was  not 
only  fitted  to  but  dependent  upon  means  of  transportation  which, 
as  respects  their  expense,  their  speed  and  their  capacity,  had  not 
essentially  altered  since  the  earliest  tribes  began  to  barter! 
Enormous  growth  of  enterprise  and  enlightenment,  continued 
progress  in  every  other  sphere  of  human  effort,  with  motive 
power  J  which  lies  at  the  foundation' of  every  activity,  remaining 
from  first  to  last  a  constant  quantity!  Before  the  earliest 
recorded  transaction — when  Abraham  purchased  the  field  of 
Ephron  and  paid  for  it  his  "400  shekels  of  silver  current  with  the 
merchant" — the  horse  and  the  ox  were  the  established  agencies 
of  land  distribution;  and  what  better  agencies,  I  beg  to  remind 
you,  became  available  at  any  time  thereafter  until  well  along  in 
the  nineteenth  century  ?  Yet  the  ox  was  as  strong  and  the  horse 
as  fleet,  and  their  powers  were  as  effectively  employed,  in  the 
days  of  the  Pharaohs  as  they  are  at  the  present  time.  No  history 
is  so  ancient  as  not  to  disclose  the  general  use  of  animals  for 
the  purposes  of  carriage,  while  the  vehicles  to  which  they  were 
harnessed  had  then  been  developed,  in  convenience  and  useful- 
ness, to  a  degree  not  much  exceeded  in  any  subsequent  period. 
Though  differing  considerably  in  appearance  from  the  wagons 
with  which  we  are  familiar,  yet  they  were  constructed  upon  the 
same  principles  and  performed  the  same  functions  as  those  now 
employed. 

Similar  progress  was  made  in  ship-building  and  seamanship 
as  far  back  as  history  affords  proof  or  tradition.  There  were 
oar  and  sail,  tides  and  currents,  and  the  inconstant  winds,  long 
before  the  ships  of  the  Phoenicians  brought  back  from  the  east 
the  gold  of  Ophir ;  and  what  more  was  there  than  oar  and  sail, 
winds  and  currents — for  all  the  purposes  of  navigation — until, 
almost  within  the  memory  of  men  yet  living,  the  little  steamboat 
of  Robert  Fulton  ascended  the  Hudson  River!  In  this  long 
span  of  time,  it  is  true,  bridges  were  built,  highways  improved, 
vehicles  better  fashioned,  sailing  craft  increased  somewhat  in 
size,  and  the  mariner's  compass  led  to  longer  voyages;  but, 
nevertheless,   the   forces   by   which   movement  is   effected,   the 


90  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

actual  means  of  distribution  on  land  and  sea,  continued  without 
substantial  change  in  character  or  efficiency  age  after  age  and 
century  after  century,  until  the  recent — the  very  recent — era  of 
steam  locomotion. 

To  my  mind,  it  is  a  matter  of  fascinating  import  that  the  long 
procession  of  the  world's  advancement  down  to  the  century 
just  ended  was  conditioned  by  and  dependent  upon  agencies  of 
transport  which  were  themselves  essentially  unprogressive  and 
incapable  of  important  betterment.  True,  there  were  minor 
modifications  from  time  to  time  in  the  line  of  mechanical  adjust- 
ment, but  the  general  methods  employed,  and  the  results  obtained, 
showed  no  marked  improvement  or  material  alteration  from 
those  applied  in  the  earliest  history  of  commerce.  Reduced  to 
the  forms  in  ordinary  use  there  were,  at  the  last  as  at  the  first, 
the  beast  of  burden  on  land  and  the  oar  and  sail  on  water.  Yet 
thus  hampered  and  restricted  in  the  means  of  distribution,  which 
is  the  measure  of  all  commercial  effort,  there  was  built  up  in 
the  long  process  of  years  the  varied  and  advanced  civilization 
which  the  last  century  inherited. 

Then  all  at  once,  as  it  were,  into  and  through  this  social  and 
industrial  structure,  so  highly  organized,  so  complex  in  character, 
so  vast  in  its  ramifications,  yet  so  adjusted  and  adapted  to  the 
fixed  limitations  of  animal  power,  was  thrust  the  new  mode  of 
conveyance  by  mechanical  force,  the  sudden  wonder  of  trans- 
portation by  steam.  The  advent  of  this  new  and  marvelous 
agency  was  the  greatest  and  most  transforming  event  in  the 
industrial  history  of  mankind.  It  wrought  an  immediate  and 
radical  change  in  the  elemental  need  of  society,  the  means  of 
distribution.  The  primary  function  was  altered  both  in  essence 
and  relations.  The  conditions  of  commercial  intercourse  were 
abruptly  and  fundamentally  altered,  and  a  veritable  new  world 
of  energy  and  opportunity  invited  the  conquest  of  the  race. 

No  other  triumph  over  the  forces  of  nature  compares  with  this 
in  its  influence  upon  human  environment.  It  has  directly  and 
powerfully  aflfected  the  direction  and  volume  of  commercial 
currents,  the  location  and  movements  of  population,  the  occupa- 
tions and  pursuits  in  which  the  masses  of  men  are  engaged,  the 
division  of  labor,  the  conditions  under  which  wealth  is  accumu- 
lated, the  social  and  industrial  habits  of  the  world,  all  the  sur- 
roundings and  characteristics  of  the  associated  life  of  to-day. 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  91 

The  world  has  seen  no  change  at  once  so  sudden  and  so  full  of 
great  results. 

The  next  fact  to  be  noted  is  hardly  less  remarkable.  Not  only 
are  the  new  methods  of  transportation  incomparably  superior 
in  speed,  cheapness  and  capacity,  but,  unlike  those  which  have 
been  supplanted,  these  new  methods  are  themselves  capable  of 
indefinite  increase  and  expansion.  The  maximum  efficiency  of 
an  animal  is  so  well  known  as  to  amount  to  a  constant  quantity, 
and  this  unit  of  power  is  virtually  unchangeable.  Substantially 
the  same  thing  is  true  of  a  vessel  of  given  dimensions  and  given 
spread  of  canvas.  For  this  reason  distribution  remained,  as  I 
have  said,  the  one  fixed  and  inflexible  element  to  which  all  other 
activities  however  elastic  and  progressive  were  necessarily 
adjusted  and  by  which  they  were  limited. 

Now  a  special  and  most  suggestive  feature  of  transportation 
by  steam,  electricity  and  other  kinds  of  mechanical  force,  is  that 
its  capacity  is  not  only  unmeasured  and  unknown  but  will  doubt- 
less prove  to  be  practically  inexhaustible.  That  is  to  say,  no 
certain  limits  can  be  assigned  to  the  operation  or  effect  of  these 
new  agencies  as  compared  with  those  which  have  been  super- 
ceded. Therefore,  speed  may  reach  many  times  the  rate  now 
attained,  the  size  of  vehicles  may  be  greatly  increased  and  the 
cost  of  carriage  for  the  longest  distances  reduced  to  an  astonish- 
ing minimum;  so  that  as  progress  goes  on  in  developing  the 
means  and  methods  of  distribution,  the  habits  and  needs  of  men 
will  be  more  and  more  modified,  with  consequences  to  social 
order  and  the  general  conditions  of  life  which  may  be  far  greater 
than  have  yet  been  imagined. 

But  this  is  not  all.  Another  fact  is  still  more  wonderful. 
Coincident  with  this  sudden  transfer  from  animal  power  to  steam 
have  come  the  new  and  amazing  means  of  transmitting  intelli- 
gence. In  a  brief  span  of  years  the  barriers  of  time  and  distance, 
hitherto  so  formidable,  have  been  swept  away  by  telegraph  and 
telephone.  No  longer  limited  to  the  agencies  by  which  material 
things  are  transported,  we  send  our  thought  and  speech  with 
lightning  swiftness  to  the  four  quarters  of  the  globe,  and  hold  all 
lands  and  peoples  within  the  sphere  of  instant  intercourse.  So 
recent  is  this  miracle  that  we  are  still  dazzled  by  its  marvels 
without  realizing  its  tremendous  import. 

That  this  substitution  of  steam  and  ele<;tricity  as  the  instru- 


92  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

ments  of  commerce  and  communication  has  been  an  immeasur- 
able gain  is  witnessed  here  and  everywhere  by  half  a  century  of 
unparalleled  progress.  Along  these  wondrous  pathways  the 
world  has  literally  leaped.  Released  from  dependence  on  beasts 
of  burden,  the  entire  realm  of  industry  has  been  quickened  and 
enlarged ;  productive  energy  has  been  vivified  by  new  and  limit- 
less means  of  distribution;  the  products  of  the  whole  earth  are 
embraced  in  wide  circles  of  exchange;  all  the  luxuries  of  all 
lands  are  brought  to  every  household;  wealth  has  multiplied 
until  we  are  surfeited  with  its  abundance,  when  other  people 
possess  it;  the  genius  of  invention  has  been  stimulated  to  larger 
exercise,  the  sphere  of  thought  grandly  extended,  the  impulses 
of  charity  awakened  to  nobler  activity,  while  keener  sympathy 
through  closer  contact  is  opening  the  way  to  world-wide  brother- 
hood. 

I  dwell  upon  these  facts  of  familiar  knowledge  because  they 
make  up  the  conditions  of  modern  life  and  underlie  the  difficul- 
ties which  now  press  for  solution.  These  manifold  benefits  have 
not  been  secured  without  many  and  serious  evils.  So  radical  a 
change  in  the  methods  of  distribution,  and  consequently  of 
production,  was  sure  to  be  attended  with  peril  as  well  as  benefi- 
cence and  to  entail  a  series  of  results  immense  and  far  reaching. 

When  movement  was  measured  by  the  strength  and  endurance 
of  animals,  only  a  limited  area  could  be  reached  from  a  common 
center.  Its  slowness  and  expense  confined  all  inland  distribution 
within  narrow  bounds.  Only  eighty  years  ago  it  took  a  week  to 
send  a  letter,  and  cost  $125  to  move  a  ton  of  freight,  from 
Philadelphia  to  Pittsburg;  and  the  average  price  for  carrying 
the  necessaries  of  life  was  not  less  than  twenty  cents  a  ton  for 
each  mile  of  distance.  On  such  a  basis  most  commodities  were 
shut  off  from  distant  markets,  and  farm  products,  for  example, 
would  seldom  permit  of  conveyance  more  than  100  or  at  most 
150  miles.  Only  such  articles  as  were  of  small  bulk  and  weight 
compared  with  their  value  were  moved  to  any  considerable  dis- 
tance from  the  place  of  production.  For  this  reason  the  require- 
ments of  an  ordinary  family  were  almost  wholly  supplied  from 
nearby  sources.  And  this  means — without  amplifying  the  state- 
ment— that  productive  energy,  for  the  most  part,  was  restricted 
by  the  consuming  capacity  of  the  surrounding  neighborhood. 
The  forces  outside  each  little  circle  were  but  feeblv  felt  and  had 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  93 

slight  influence  upon  its  separate  affairs.  Broadly  speaking,  the 
business  of  each  locality  was  adjusted  to  its  own  conditions  and 
was  practically  undisturbed  by  like  operations  in  other  places. 
What  we  call  competition  was  held  in  check  by  slow  and  costly 
means  of  conveyance;  its  effects  were  moderate  and  limited,  its 
friction  seldom  severe. 

But  the  use  of  steam  for  motive  power  and  electricity  for 
sending  news  increased  enormously  the  range  of  accessible 
markets,  and  at  once  intensified  competition  by  the  celerity  and 
cheapness  of  distribution.  Industrial  strife  has  already  become 
world-wide  in  extent  and  distance  an  ineffectual  barrier  against 
its  destructive  assaults.  For  distance  as  a  business  factor  is  not 
at  all  a  matter  of  miles,  it  is  merely  a  question  of  time  and 
money.  The  commercial  effect  of  cheap  conveyance  and  quick 
communication  is  to  bring  remote  places  closer  together.  For 
all  the  practical  needs  or  enjoyments  of  life  Manila  is  nearer 
Middletown  now  than  Montreal  was  a  century  ago;  and  the 
whole  continent  could  be  as  easily  governed  from  Washington 
to-day  as  could  the  twenty- four  states  which  comprised  our 
Union  in  1831  when  this  institution  was  founded. 

Our  grandparents  got  their  supplies  mainly  in  the  neighbor- 
hood where  they  resided,  and  only  a  few  persons  were  concerned 
in  their  production.  To-day  it  may  safely  be  said  that  five 
millions  of  people  and  five  hundred  millions  of  capital  are  directly 
or  indirectly  employed  in  furnishing  a  family  dinner.  When 
merchandise  of  every  description  is  moved  by  the  ton  at  great 
speed  from  one  end  of  the  land  to  the  other,  and  at  an  average 
cost  of  less  than  three-quarters  of  a  cent  a  mile,  as  is  now  the 
case,  the  expense  of  transport  is  but  a  trifling  impediment  to  the 
widest  distribution. 

Nor  should  we  forget  that  it  was  the  opening  up  of  new  and 
ever  enlarging  markets,  by  the  cheapness  of  steam  transportation, 
which  gave  the  first  opportunity  for  the  extensive  use  of 
machinery ;  and  this  in  turn  quadrupled  the  capacity  of  labor  and 
greatly  reduced  the  cost  of  large  scale  production.  By  this 
revolution  in  the  methods  of  manufacture — caused  by  the  railroad 
and  steamship — the  mechanic  was  supplanted  by  the  operative, 
and  the  skilled  and  independent  craftsman  of  former  days  found 
his  occupation  gone.  For  what  chance  now  have  hand-made 
articles   when  the   factory-made  product  is  carried   across  the 


94  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

continent  at  nominal  cost  ?  But  the  factory  without  the  railroad 
would  be  only  a  toy  shop.  If  its  wares  had  to  be  hauled  over 
country  roads  by  mules  and  horses,  the  points  they  could  reach 
would  be  few  and  near-by,  and  thus  contracted  sales  would  limit 
the  size  of  the  plant  and  the  volume  of  its  business.  It  is  simply 
because  transportation  is  now  so  speedy,  so  cheap  and  so  abun- 
dant that  great  establishments  have  become  profitable  and  driven 
their  smaller  rivals  from  the  field. 

These  facts — which  might  be  multiplied  without  limit — bear 
directly,  as  I  think,  and  with  a  force  not  fully  perceived,  upon  the 
whole  problem  of  industrial  competition.  The  argument  runs 
this  way :  As  the  means  by  which  industrial  products  are  distrib- 
uted become  more  convenient,  quicker  in  action  and  less  expen- 
sive, the  area  of  distribution  rapidly  enlarges,  and  as  the  area  of 
distribution  enlarges  the  competition  of  industrial  forces 
increases  in  something  like  geometrical  ratio.  The  movement  of 
property  by  rail  in  the  United  States  alone  already  exceeds  four 
millions  of  tons  every  twenty-four  hours.  Think  of  the  rivalry 
of  products,  the  strife  of  labor,  the  strain  and  struggle  of  trade, 
which  such  a  movement  implies.  With  the  constant  acceleration 
of  that  movement,  which  is  certain  to  happen,  how  long  can  the 
friction  be  endured?     How  soon  will  it  become  unbearable? 

The  truth  is  that  new  conditions  have  arisen  and  new  methods 
must  be  adopted.  All  the  pressure  of  modern  life  impels  to  the 
coordination  of  effort.  We  see  that  discord  and  antagonism,  to 
say  nothing  of  their  moral  bearing,  have  far  less  efficiency  than 
harmony  and  cooperation.  The  world  is  searching  for  econo- 
mies. It  is  intolerant  of  needless  expense.  The  way  a  thing 
can  be  done  the  easiest  and  cheapest  is  the  way  it  is  bound  to  be 
done  and  the  way  it  ought  to  be  done.  We  want  the  best  results 
and  find  that  they  come  from  combination.  The  old  aphorism, 
"in  union  there  is  strength,"  takes  on  a  new  meaning.  It  is  the 
law  of  growth  and  increase.  It  applies  to  industries  as  well  as 
to  individuals.  To  unite  is  to  advance.  The  concentration  of 
process  is  the  expansion  of  output. 

Thus  the  potent  agencies  by  which  distribution  is  now  so 
rapidly  and  so  cheaply  effected,  which  so  combine  and  intensify 
the  forces  of  production,  are  fast  altering  the  conditions  and 
changing  the  character  of  industrial  development.  And  the  end 
is  not  yet;    it  outruns  imagination.     What  will  be  the  ultimate 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  95 

effect  of  these  methods  of  conveyance  and  intercourse  when 
brought  to  higher  perfection  and  employed  with  still  greater 
efficiency?  When  these  agencies  of  commerce  are  increased  in 
number  and  capacity,  as  they  will  be;  when  cost  is  still  further 
and  greatly  reduced,  as  it  will  be;  when  speed  is  doubled,  as  it 
will  be,  and  quadrupled,  as  it  may  be;  when  the  whole  United 
States  shall  have  reached  the  density  of  population  now  existing 
in  Great  Britain,  how  can  industrial  competition  possibly  survive  ? 

When  Adam  Smith  wrote  "The  Wealth  of  Nations,"  it  took 
two  weeks  to  haul  a  wagon-load  of  goods  from  London  to 
Edinburgh,  and  such  a  thing  as  a  business  or  industrial  cor- 
poration was  virtually  unknown.  To-day  the  great  enterprises 
of  the  world  are  in  the  hands  of  corporations,  and  the  time  is 
fast  approaching  when  they  will  absorb  all  impvortant  undertak- 
ings. Why?  Simply  because  the  railroad  and  the  steamship — 
cheap  and  rapid  transportation,  all  the  while  growing  cheaper 
and  quicker — ever  widening  the  area  of  profitable  distribution, 
furnish  the  opportunity,  otherwise  lacking,  for  the  employment 
of  larger  and  still  larger  capital.  This  opportunity  permits  and 
encourages  the  concentration  of  financial  resources;  so  that, 
within  limits  not  yet  ascertained,  the  larger  the  business  the 
greater  its  possibilities  of  gain.  But  the  legitimate,  the  inevita- 
ble offspring  of  corporations  is  monopoly.  Why?  Simply 
because  the  operation  of  these  massive  forces — reaching  and 
contesting  in  every  market  of  the  world — begets  an  extremity  of 
mutual  danger  which  always  invites  and  often  compels  a  common 
agreement  as  to  prices  and  productions;  that  is,  a  trust.  Just 
as  the  implements  of  warfare  may  become  so  devastating  in  their 
effects  that  nations  will  be  forced  to  live  in  amity,  so  the  destruc- 
tiveness  and  exhaustion  of  commercial  strife  in  these  larger 
spheres  of  action  will  make  combination  a  necessity. 

So,  in  the  measureless  and  transforming  effects  of  modern 
transportation,  and  the  ends  to  which  it  resistlessly  tends,  I  find 
the  principal  cause  of  the  economic  revolution  upon  which  we 
have  entered.  The  incoming  of  these  new  and  unfettered  forces 
not  only  changed  the  basic  function  of  society  but  greatly  dis- 
turbed its  industrial  order.  In  the  effort  to  restore  a  working 
equilibrium  strange  questions  arise  and  novel  difficulties  are 
encountered.  Already  we  are  compelled  to  doubt  the  infalli- 
bility of  many  inherited  precepts  and  to  reopen  many  contro- 


96  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

versies  which  our  grandsires  regarded  as  finally  settled.  The 
ponderous  engine  that  moves  thrice  a  thousand  tons  across  an 
empire  of  states,  the  ocean  steamer  that  carries  the  population  of 
a  village  on  its  decks  and  the  products  of  a  township  in  its  hold, 
the  vast  mergers  of  producing  and  distributing  machinery  whose 
colossal  grasp  covers  land  and  sea,  are  indeed  splendid  evidences 
of  constructive  genius  and  financial  daring,  but  more  than  this 
they  are  economic  and  social  problems  whose  complexity  bewil- 
ders and  whose  magnitude  dismays.  They  force  us  to  discredit 
the  venerable  maxim  that  "competition  is  the  life  of  trade," 
and  warn  us,  I  think,  that  the  political  economy  of  the  future 
must  be  built  on  a  nobler  hypothesis.  If  it  be  true  in  the  long 
run,  as  all  experience  teaches,  that  where  combination  is  possible 
competition  is  impossible,  is  it  not  equally  true  that  combination 
becomes  p>ossible  just  in  proportion  as  transportation  becomes 
ampler,  speedier  and  cheaper?  So  the  opportunity,  if  not  the 
necessity,  for  combination  has  already  come  in  many  lines  of 
activity  and  will  certainly  come  in  many  more.  For  the  circum- 
stance that  permits  competition,  its  sine  qua  non,  is  mainly  differ- 
ence of  conditions.  Practically  speaking,  this  difference  is  chiefly 
found  in  the  means  of  distribution.  As  that  difference  disap- 
pears, with  the  constantly  diminishing  time  and  cost  of  transport, 
the  ability  to  combine  will  increase  and  the  inducement  to  do  so 
become  overwhelming.  That  seems  to  me  the  obvious  ten- 
dency of  industrial  and  social  movements  to-day,  and  that 
tendency,  I  predict,  will  be  more  and  more  marked  as  time 
goes  on. 

How  fast  the  process  will  develop,  or  what  phases  it  will 
assume,  does  not  yet  admit  of  confident  forecast.  Many  experi- 
ments will  be  tried,  many  failures  occur,  before  the  readjustment 
is  accomplished.  Remedies  will  be  sought  in  profit-sharing,  in 
the  distribution  of  corporate  stocks  among  employes,  in  the 
socialization  of  public  utilities,  in  largely  increasing  the  functions 
of  government.  By  whatsoever  road  reached,  the  ultimate  if 
not  early  outcome  will  probably  be  some  form  of  centralized 
control  with  diffused  or  decentralized  ownership.  Meanwhile, 
the  exactions  of  monopoly,  the  feebleness  of  legal  restraints, 
the  heaping  up  of  fabulous  fortunes,  the  prejudice  of  the  igno- 
rant, the  envy  of  the  iilcapable ;  and  through  all  and  over  all  the 
inappeasable  voice  of  labor  demanding,  not  without  reason,  a 
larger  share  of  the  wealth  which  it  produces. 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  97 

That  these  great  consolidations  are  wholly  desirable  I  certainly 
do  not  pretend.  On  the  contrary,  they  occasion  much  cause  for 
regret  and  not  a  little  for  grave  apprehension.  The  utilization 
of  new  forces,  the  transfer  to  new  methods,  the  control  of  pro- 
ducing and  distributing  agencies  by  huge  combinations,  must  in 
the  nature  of  the  case  inflict  many  hardships  and  involve  many 
surrenders.  Nevertheless,  a  great  principle  underlies  this  move- 
ment, the  principle  of  industrial  peace  and  efficiency,  the  principle 
of  cooperation.  Beyond  all  question  that  principle  is  to  govern; 
despite  all  drawbacks  its  operation  will  prove  beneficent. 

Everything  has  the  defect  of  its  qualities.  We  cannot  have 
hot  iron  that  will  not  burn;  so  there  are  suffering  and  scars. 
Nor  does  betterment  wait  till  everyone  is  ready  for  it  or  worthy 
of  it;  if  it  did,  there  would  be  little  advancement.  Fortunately, 
progress  does  not  require  a  unanimous  vote;  it  comes  through 
the  slow  mastery  of  ignorance  and  wrong-doing  by  wiser  conduct 
and  higher  standards  of  duty.  We  did  not  secure  freedom  of 
conscience  and  worship  without  the  fanatic  and  the  hypocrite; 
but  were  these  vastly  worse  or  more  numerous  than  they  are  it 
would  be  a  small  price  to  pay  for  the  boon  of  religious  liberty. 
We  do  not  have  universal  suffrage,  or  at  least  universal  male 
suffrage,  without  the  demagogue  and  the  boss.  Shall  we,  there- 
fore, destroy  the  ballot-box  and  despair  of  self-government?  In 
like  manner,  the  advent  of  industrial  association  is  attended  by 
the  mammoth  corporation  and  the  billionaire  syndicate.  But 
till  we  have  found  some  better  way  to  provide  the  capital  for  great 
undertakings,  we  may  well  restrain  our  envy  and  our  fear  of  the 
financial  magnate. 

Let  us  not  denounce  but  discriminate.  The  combines  that  are 
formed  to  pluck  credulous  investors,  or  to  force  extortionate 
profits  from  a  helpless  public,  are  justly  regarded  as  the  enemies 
of  social  order.  Their  promoters  are  commercial  buccaneers 
whose  condemnation  cannot  be  too  severe  or  punishment  too 
swift.  But  you  would  not  sweep  all  ships  from  the  sea  merely  to 
get  rid  of  a  few  pirates.  Rather,  you  would  multiply  the  ships, 
yes,  subsidize  them  if  need  be,  and  meanwhile  quietly  hang  the 
pirates ! 

So,  in  the  unrest  and  discontent  around  us,  deep-seated  and 
alarming  here  and  there,  I  read  the  desperate  attempt  to  avoid  the 
effects  of  industrial  competition  and  a  tremendous  protest  against 

7 


98  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

its  savage  reprisals.  Every  trust  and  combination,  whether 
organized  by  capitalists  or  by  artisans,  every  strike  and  lockout, 
is  a  repudiation  of  its  teachings  and  a  denial  of  its  pretensions. 
The  competitive  theory  may  have  answered  the  age  of  mules  and 
sailboats  and  spinning  wheels,  but  it  fails  to  satisfy  the  interlac- 
ing needs,  or  to  sustain  the  interdependent  activities,  which  are 
founded  on  modem  methods  of  intercourse  and  distribution;  it 
is  a  theory  unsuited  to  the  era  of  railways  and  wireless  telegraphy, 
this  era  of  ours,  so  restless  in  thought,  so  resistless  in  action. 

This,  then,  as  I  conceive,  is  the  underlying  question.  Shall  we 
continue  to  enforce  with  precept  and  penalty  the  rule  of  competi- 
tion, whose  cruel  creed  is  ''every  man  for  himself,"  or  shall  the 
effort  and  industry  of  the  world  be  hereafter  conducted  on  a  more 
humane  and  fraternal  principle?  That  is  to  say,  is  society — ■ 
stripped  of  its  polish,  its  gracious  customs,  its  altruistic  preten- 
sions— is  society  after  all  only  a  mass  of  struggling  brutes  fighting 
for  the  best  places  and  the  biggest  bones,  and  is  government  simply 
an  armed  referee  standing  by  to  see  that  every  dog  has  fair 
play?  In  short,  is  personal  selfishness  the  ultimate  force,  and 
individual  greed  the  bottom  fact?  If  so,  if  that  is  the  meaning 
of  the  life  around  us  and  within  us ;  if  there  can  be  no  advance 
without  competition,  no  increasing  benefit  save  by  strife  and  self- 
seeking;  if  the  outcome  of  it  all  is  forever  to  be  "every  man  for 
himself,"  then  progress  seems  to  me  almost  a  misfortune,  and  the 
highest  civilization  the  greatest  catastrophe!  For  myself  I  dis- 
believe the  doctrine.  I  am  not  terrified  by  the  cry  of  paternalism, 
nor  dismayed  by  unreasoning  clamor  at  the  dangers  of  monopoly. 
The  trusts  and  the  unions  are  here,  in  money,  in  labor,  in  produc- 
tion and  in  distribution — they  came  with  the  railroad  and  the 
steamship — and  they  have  come  to  stay. 

When  j>opulation  was  scattered  and  sparse,  when  movement  was 
difficult  and  costly,  when  communities  were  isolated  by  distance 
and  by  dissimilarity,  and  bonds  of  relationship  were  feeble  and 
few,  the  attrition  of  rivalry  was  complacently  endured.  But 
now,  when  seas  are  spanned  with  steamships  and  netted  with 
electric  wires ;  when  city  and  forest,  farm  and  factory,  mine  and 
counting-room  are  joined  together  by  innumerable  pathways  of 
steel,  and  the  swift  locomotive,  rushing  across  continents — like  the 
shuttle  through  the  loom — weaves  this  majestic  fabric  of  com- 
merce which  covers  the  globe;   when  life  is  no  longer  localized 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  99 

in  effort  or  achievement,  and  the  thought  of  one  man  is  the  instan- 
taneous possession  of  all  men,  the  friction  of  unbridled  competi- 
tion has  become  irksome  and  intolerable.  It  is  folly  to  shut  our 
eyes  to  unmistakable  facts  or  to  stand  in  the  way  of  inevitable 
events.  Doubters  may  deride,  demagogues  denounce,  and  ignor- 
ant law-makers  strive  to  buijd  up  legal  barriers;  but  neither 
agitation,  nor  protestation,  nor  legislation,  can  stop  the  growth  or 
prevent  the  advance  of  industrial  federation. 

Thus,  as  I  view  the  matter,  our  modern  means  of  transportation 
and  communication,  ever  advancing  to  ends  we  do  not  yet  foresee, 
are  destined  to  play  a  larger  and  still  larger  part  in  our  national 
development.  Already  they  have  transformed  the  methods  of 
business,  altered  the  customs  of  society,  recast  the  relations 
between  capital  and  labor,  and  enlarged  the  fields  of  activity  to 
world-wide  proportions.  But  with  them  and  by  them  has  come 
this  extraordinary  opportunity  to  unite  and  combine.  They  have 
given  us  the  corporation,  the  merger,  the  holding  company,  all  the 
facile  devices  by  which  competition  is  checked  and  monopoly  fos- 
tered. With  these  have  come  schemes  that  entrap  the  unwary, 
practices  that  offend  the  rudest  conception  of  justice,  wealth 
gained  without  work  and  spent  in  vulgar  display,  contempt  for 
simple  living,  the  devouring  passion  to  be  rich. 

We  witness  the  absorption  of  this  business  and  that  industry, 
and  wonder  where  or  when  the  process  will  come  to  an  end? 
What  limit  can  be  set  to  its  operations?  Is  the  small  dealer  to 
entirely  disappear  and  every  branch  of  trade  to  be  absorbed  by  a 
trust?  If  so,  will  the  employing  class  be  further  reduced  in 
number  and  strengthened  in  power  until  a  few  great  overlords 
control  the  activities  and  absorb  the  profits  of  industry?  If  so, 
will  the  fabulous  fortunes  of  our  day  be  further  augmented  and 
a  still  larger  percentage  of  the  dependent  forced  below  the  poverty 
line? 

Surely  we  cannot  shut  our  eyes  to  the  evidences  of  wrong-doing 
and  oppression  which  accumulate  on  every  hand.  On  our  great 
railway  systems,  the  highways  of  the  nation,  which  should  be  open 
to  all  on  equal  terms,  secret  discriminations  which  enrich  the 
favored  by  preferential  rates  and  seriously  handicap  when  they  do 
not  defeat  those  from  whom  higher  charges  are  exacted ;  in  the 
industrial  field  methods  of  shameful  ingenuity  and  destructive 
effect.     The  wily  Indian  was  not  more  cunning  or  merciless  in 


ICX)  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

dealing  with  his  enemies  than  are  some  of  the  concerns  of 
famihar  name  whose  unfair  and  lawless  methods  violate  every 
principle  of  honorable  rivalry. 

Just  now  the  country  is  shocked  with  disclosures  of  avarice  and 
venality  so  extensive  and  surprising  as  to  make  us  wonder  if  com- 
mercial dealing  in  general  is  based  upon  dishonesty  and  permeated 
with  graft.  Can  it  be  that  buying  and  selling,  producing  and 
distributing,  are  everywhere  founded  on  fraud  and  conducted 
by  bribery  and  deceit?  For  one,  I  do  not  believe  it.  Possibly  in 
our  righteous  anger  at  these  revelations  we  have  become  a  trifle 
hysterical  and  hastily  drawn  inferences  which  the  truth  does  not 
warrant.  Is  there  not  something  assuring  in  the  fact  that  the 
public  mind  is  stirred  with  indignation  at  these  disclosures?  If 
the  peculations,  extortion,  and  dishonesty  which  have  filled  the 
newspapers  of  late  were  read  without  surprise,  without  intense 
disapproval,  we  might  well  feel  alarm  for  the  state  of  business 
morals  and  the  standards  of  commercial  honor.  But  the  unspar- 
ing denunciation  which  these  practices  everywhere  receive 
indicates  to  my  mind  that  the  great  majority  of  men  are  upright 
and  trustworthy.  The  gratuitous  distribution  of  mining  stocks 
among  railway  official,  the  extravagance  and  breaches  of  trust 
by  life  insurance  managers,  the  payment  of  rebates  to  big  ship- 
pers and  the  dastardly  methods  sometimes  used  to  destroy  a 
competitor,  are  far  from  proving  that  this  is  a  nation  of  rascals 
and  that  business  integrity  is  a  lost  virtue. 

Yet  these  offences  are  not  to  be  ignored  or  overlooked,  and 
it  is  a  foolish  optimism  that  belittles  their  gravity.  It  is  no  time 
for  indifference  or  trifling,  for  we  are  face  to  face  with  a  serious 
situation.  We  see  that  the  exercise  of  corporate  power  develops 
alarming  abuses.  We  see  the  disregard  and  defiance  of  law,  the 
bribery  of  legislators,  the  gift  of  *  enormous  sums  to  party 
managers  to  defeat  the  popular  will,  and  the  ruin  of  business 
rivals,  not  by  fair  competition  but  by  the  most  unscrupulous 
practices.  We  have  cause  for  distrust  and  deep  resentment. 
But  we  cannot  go  back  to  the  simpler  methods  of  our  grand- 
fathers, the  old  order  of  things  has  passed  away ;  we  are  forced 
to  deal  with  new  conditions. 

We  must  take  into  account  that  these  conditions  permit  a 
concentration  of  wealth  control  which  may  well  excite  our  appre- 
hension.    The  unification  of  industries  has  placed  a  large  part 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  loi 

of  our  producing  machinery  in  the  hands  of  a  few  combines, 
while  our  transportation  systems  have  been  merged  and  consoli- 
dated until  independent  lines  are  few  and  unimportant.  Look  at 
the  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  separate  railroad  companies  as  Lhey 
were  originally  incorporated,  and  see  how  the  strands  of  control, 
all  stretching  in  one  direction,  are  woven  into  a  score  or  two  of 
ropes,  and  how  the  ropes  in  turn  are  twisted  into  a  few  huge 
cables  which  run  side  by  side  into  the  city  of  New  York,  while 
bound  in  with  strand  and  rope  and  cable  are  the  threads  of  cofitrol 
of  the  greatest  commercial  and  industrial  enterprises  the  world 
has  ever  known.  Here  is  an  empire  within  an  empire,  the  empire 
of  popular  government  and  the  empire  of  organized  and  con- 
centrated wealth;  and  we  may  well  ask  ourselves,  which  of 
these  empires  shall  be  sovereign  and  which  subject? 

Shall  these  aggregations  be  subordinated  to  public  authority 
and  so  controlled  as  to  subserve  the  public  welfare,  or  shall  the 
reign  of  combined  capital  still  further  enrich  its  owners  by  invad- 
ing the  rights  of  the  people  and  holding  the  masses  in  a  state  of 
servitude?  Shall  the  seat  of  power  in  this  great  country  be  in 
Washington  or  Wall  street?  Just  now,  fortunately,  it  is  very 
much  in  Washington,  because  Theodore  Roosevelt  is  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States. 

We  must  also  realize  that  this  tendency  to  combine,  springing 
from  the  sources  I  have  described,  cannot  be  wholly  restrained, 
much  less  defeated,  by  statutes  of  prohibition.  The  incentive  is 
so  urgent,  the  rewards  so  alluring  and  the  methods  of  accom- 
plishment of  such  endless  variety,  that  by  one  means  or  another 
the  desired  result  will  be  attained  despite  all  attempts  to  prevent 
it.  That  our  legislative  policy  in  this  respect  has  been  mistaken, 
if  not  mischievous,  I  am  fully  persuaded.  State  and  national 
laws  have  been  multiplied,  all  seeking  by  denunciation  and 
penalty  to  place  a  ban  upon  combination  and  keep  asunder  those 
who  seek  to  unite.  But  this  effort  has  not  succeeded.  Com- 
binations increase  and  flourish  despite  the  legislative  attempt  to 
suppress  them,  while  it  frequently  happens  that  the  prohibiting 
statute  indirectly  aids  the  very  thing  against  which  it  is  directed. 
Indeed,  it  is  my  firm  belief  that  there  is  less  actual  competition  in 
this  country  to-day  than  there  would  have  been  if  none  of  these 
laws  had  been  enacted.  It  would  certainly  be  difficult  to  devise 
a  more  sweeping  and  drastic  measure  than  the  Sherman  Anti- 


I02  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

trust  Law,  as  that  act  has  been  construed  by  the  highest  court  in 
the  land,  and  one  can  scarcely  imagine  a  more  powerful  attack 
upon  the  merger  of  great  properties  than  the  suit  of  the  United 
States,  with  all  its  influence  and  resources,  against  the  Northern 
Securities  Company.  It  is  true  that  the  Government  won  its 
suit,  by  a  vote  of  five  to  four,  but  as  President  Roosevelt  had 
the  candor  to  say  in  his  last  annual  message  to  the  Congress, 
whatever  may  have  been  the  moral  advantages  of  success  in  that 
contest  it  has  not  produced  the  slightest  economic  change.  No 
railway  charge  has  been  reduced  and  no  facility  added  or 
improved  in  consequence  of  that  litigation.  Two  transconti- 
nental lines  and  the  great  interior  system  which  they  had 
acquired  are  as  complete  a  monopoly  now  as  they  were  before 
the  suit  was  begun,  and  the  stock  of  the  Northern  Securities 
Company  sells  much  higher  to-day  than  it  did  when  the  judg- 
ment of  the  Supreme  Court  was  pronounced.  Surely  the  time 
has  come  when  we  should  recognize  that  competition  cannot  be 
compelled  by  statute,  and  that  it  is  the  part  of  wisdom  to  control 
and  direct  an  economic  movement  which  cannot  be,  and  ought 
not  to  be,  entirely  resisted.  Why  should  we  not  frankly  admit 
the  failure  of  prohibitive  enactments  and  seek  for  practical  and 
useful  results  through  measures  of  restraint  and  regulation  ? 

What,  then,  are  the  remedies  for  corporate  wrong-doing  ?  How 
shall  we  prevent  the  lawless  excesses,  the  insatiable  greed,  the 
wholesale  corruption  which  recent  investigations  have  opened  to 
our  astonished  sight?  What  adequate  checks  can  be  applied, 
what  protective  methods  adopted  to  safeguard  the  public  welfare 
against  the  dangers  of  combination? 

Most  of  us  shrink  from  the  solution  which  socialism  offers. 
We  instinctively  reject  the  remedy  of  public  ownership.  We 
have  seen  the  extension  of  government  functions  to  one  field  and 
another,  with  more  success  on  the  whole  than  was  looked  for,  yet 
we  hesitate  to  seek  further  in  this  direction  the  panacea  for 
industrial  and  social  evils.  We  deprecate  the  restriction  of 
private  enterprise  and  look  with  misgiving  upon  every  scheme 
of  paternalism.  We  distrust  the  ability  of  government  to  manage 
the  vast  and  varied  operations  which  are  the  result  of  modem 
combination.  We  fear  its  slowness,  its  expense,  its  red-tape 
methods.  We  are  accustomed  to  think  of  our  captains  of 
industry  as  far  more  capable  than  a  government  bureau ;  and  we 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  103 

utterly  disbelieve  in  the  theory  of  promoting  social  welfare  by 
merging  the  individual  in  the  state.  But  when  investigation 
brings  to  our  view  the  inner  workings  of  some  of  the  greatest 
private  concerns,  even  those  which  we  have  supposed  to  be  the 
best  of  their  kind,  when  we  discover  the  crookedness  and  cor- 
ruption, the  pervading  injustice,  which  we  had  not  even  suspected, 
we  need  not  wonder  that  thousands  of  people  are  already  saying 
that  a  government  monopoly,  whatever  its  disadvantages  or 
dangers,  is  far  better  than  any  private  monopoly  which  exhibits 
such  mean  and  mercenary  features.  Is  there  no  other  way  for 
the  state  to  deal  with  a  monopoly  than  to  absorb  it?  Is  that  the 
only  alternative?  This  much  is  certain,  little  as  we  like  it: 
Unless  we  can  find  ample  means  for  preventing  the  encroach- 
ments and  correcting  the  excesses  of  corporate  power,  the  move- 
ment for  government  ownership  will  gain  rapidly,  very  rapidly, 
the  support  of  public  demand.  Those  who  deprecate  such  an 
outcome  and  desire  to  preserve  the  benefits  of  private  industry 
may  well  concern  themselves  with  every  effort  to  put  a  stop 
to  the  ruthless  methods  and  arrogant  disregard  of  public  rights 
which  now  so  often  characterize  the  conduct  ot  corporate 
affairs. 

Much  can  be  done  by  education.  A  clearer  understanding 
of  these  great  questions,  in  their  political  and  economic  aspects, 
will  greatly  aid  us  to  utilize  the  advantages  of  associated  effort 
and  at  the  same  time  minimize  the  evils  which  now  attend  the 
methods  of  combination.  When  once  there  is  better  knowledge 
of  a  subject  of  such  commanding  importance,  an  intelligent 
public  sentiment  will  find  expression  in  wise  and  workable  lav/s 
whose  enforcement  will  go  far  towards  correcting  the  miscon- 
duct now  so  frequent  and  so  offensive. 

Especially  do  we  need  to  cultivate  a  spirit  of  obedience  to 
law.  In  the  nature  of  the  case  the  maintenance  of  social  order 
and  the  rights  of  the  individual  depend  upon  the  observance  by 
all  of  the  rules  of  conduct  prescribed  by  public  authority.  If 
those  rules  are  disregarded  by  the  influential  or  evaded  by  the 
dishonest  the  whole  structure  is  put  in  danger.  If  the  rich  or 
the  powerful  are  not  reached  by  the  law,  the  law  itself  falls 
into  disrepute  and  the  safety  of  all  is  imperiled.  Unfortunately 
there  is  too  much  ground  for  the  belief  that  the  possessors  of 
large  wealth  often  succeed  in  avoiding  their  legal  obligations 


I04  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

and  that  this  is  the  secret  of  their  abnormal  fortunes.  It  will 
be  a  distinct  advance  in  public  morals  and  a  pKDtent  aid  to  social 
tranquility  when  it  comes  to  pass  that  no  law  can  be  broken  or 
circumvented,  no  matter  what  the  wealth  or  station  of  the 
offender,  without  prompt  and  certain  punishment. 

Moreover,  we  have  discovered  that  much  can  be  accomplished 
by  publicity.  It  is  the  nature  of  meanness  and  deceit  to  work 
in  secret;  the  most  potent  preventive  is  the  fear  of  exposure. 
When  corporate  operations  are  open  to  public  knowledge,  when 
they  may  be  known  and  read  of  all  men,  when  concealment  is 
impossible,  the  danger  of  oppression  is  reduced  to  a  minimum. 
And  this  for  the  reason  that  there  is  some  quality  in  human 
nature,  some  instinctive  faculty  to  approve  the  right  and  con- 
demn the  wrong,  which  makes  the  boldest  transgressor  unwill- 
ing to  meet  the  consequences  of  public  disclosure. 

We  must  recognize  the  fact  that  our  modern  methods  are  to 
continue,  and  that  more  and  more  capital  will  combine  to  prose- 
cute great  undertakings.  We  must  accept,  I  think,  the  monop- 
olistic trend  of  these  conditions.  We  can  restrain  and  regulate 
by  wise  legislation,  we  can  limit  and  curb  by  suitable  laws,  but 
after  all  I  am  sure  we  shall  find  the  most  powerful  aid  to  decent 
conduct  in  a  large  measure  of  publicity.  When  everything  is 
done  in  the  open  and  no  unconscionable  act  can  be  kept  out  of 
sight,  the  dishonest  will  become  timid  and  the  unscrupulous 
afraid. 

Just  now  we  are  witnessing  a  tremendous  upheaval.  All  at 
once  everything  seems  to  be  uncovered.  In  one  place  and 
another,  in  this  business  and  that  industry,  in  the  east  and  in  the 
west,  many  masks  have  been  torn  off  and  the  ugly  faces  of 
avarice  and  dishonesty  exposed  to  public  view.  It  is  a  startling 
revelation,  but  perhaps  just  the  thing  needed  to  arouse  us  from 
apathy  and  break  down  our  stolid  complacency.  And  it  will 
accomplish  wonders  for  the  public  good.  The  fact  of  exposure 
will  be  more  potent  than  the  most  drastic  statute.  Laws  will 
be  enforced,  as  they  have  not  been  heretofore,  the  standard  of 
business  morals  will  be  distinctly  elevated  and  a  public  senti- 
ment created  which  will  prevent  the  recurrence  of  such 
misconduct. 

After  all,  and  more  than  all,  we  need  to  apply  old  principles 
to  new  conditions.     We  need  to  quicken  the  insight,  clarify  the 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  105 

judgment  and  elevate  the  moral  sense.  When  the  force  of 
public  opinion  compels  those  who  manage  great  undertakings 
to  realize  their  responsibility,  compels  them  to  take  into  account 
their  obligations  to  every  interest  and  every  person  affected  by 
their  operations,  there  is  little  danger  that  their  conduct  will 
be  unfair  or  oppressive.  The  misdeeds  which  offend  and 
endanger  will  quickly  disappear  when  the  hearts  of  men  are 
filled  with  justice  and  uprightness  becomes  the  habit  of  life. 
We  want  an  old-fashioned  revival  of  honesty,  a  clearer  percep- 
tion of  the  rights  of  others,  a  more  robust  and  resolute  integrity. 
This  means  a  good  deal  more  than  technical  observance  of  the 
law's  requirements.  It  is  not  enough  to  abstain  from  the  frauds 
that  deceive,  the  trickery  that  entraps  or  the  bribery  that 
seduces.  To-day  as  never  before  comes  urgent  demand  for  the 
unselfish  and  helpful  spirit  which  protects  the  weak  and  safe- 
guards the  defenceless. 

We  need  a  better  sense  of  proportion.  We  are  accustomed 
to  overvalue  material  wealth  without  taking  into  account  the 
manner  of  its  acquisition.  We  need  to  revise  our  estimates  and 
give  regard  only  to  men  of  honest  motive  and  honorable  con- 
duct. We  need  to  realize  as  Ruskin  puts  it,  "that  there  is  more 
happiness  in  a  single  dollar  earned  by  honest  toil  than  in  all  the 
plundered  wealth  upon  the  shores  to  which  false  lights  have 
lured  an  argosy." 

The  educated  men  and  women  of  to-day  should  be  alive  to 
the  opportunities  that  invite  and  the  needs  that  must  be  met. 
Transportation  and  combination  have  brought  us  face  to  face 
with  difficulties  that  embarrass  and  dangers  that  alarm.  Under 
the  conditions  of  competitive  industry  the  task  of  public 
administration  was  comparatively  easy,  but  under  conditions 
which  now  exist,  and  from  which  we  cannot  escape,  complexi- 
ties multiply  and  burdens  increase.  Can  we  settle  these  great 
economic  questions?  Can  we  utilize  the  forces  of  combination 
and  at  the  same  time  avoid  the  extortions  of  monopoly?  Can 
we  keep  capital  within  proper  restraints  and  give  to  labor  its 
just  reward?  Can  we  preserve  the  rights  of  private  property 
and  yet  prevent  the  abnormal  accumulations  which  are  so  dis- 
proportionate to  effort  or  merit?  Can  we  put  a  stop  to  the  evils 
so  often  connected  with  the  methods  of  private  enterprise  and 
so  hold  in  check  the  menacing  advance  of  socialism?     In  short, 


io6  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

can  we  raise  this  wide  realm  of  commerce  and  industry  from 
selfishness  to  charity,  from  strife  to  friendship,  from  competi- 
tion to  cooperation,  from  the  warring  instincts  of  the  savage 
state  to  the  larger  and  nobler  needs  of  associated  life?  This 
is  the  problem  of  railroad  and  steamship,  of  telegraph  and  tele- 
phone, of  the  subtle  and  limitless  forces  of  modern  life,  the 
problem  which  will  test  the  wisdom  of  statesmanship  and  tax 
the  resources  of  public  authority. 

Because  I  believe  that  we  shall  succeed  in  solving  these 
weighty  problems,  I  have  little  sympathy  with  the  pessimistic 
views  so  often  advanced  in  the  Commencement  addresses  of 
1906.  I  realize  that  conditions  have  changed  and  novel  ques- 
tions arisen.  The  industrial  readjustment  now  taking  place 
presents  many  difficulties  and  makes  many  demands.  There  is 
much  to  disturb  the  complacent  and  sober  the  thoughtful.  But 
why  should  we  fear  for  the  welfare  of  our  country  or  the 
stability  of  its  institutions?  When  was  there  more  to  justify  ^ 
hope  or  stimulate  enthusiasm?  Are  not  our  strength  and 
courage  and  patriotism  equal  alike  to  present  emergency  and 
future  peril?  Surely  the  experiment  of  self-government,  with 
all  its  promise  and  uplifting  power,  is  not  doomed  to  failure 
because  here  and  there  a  man  has  been  found  faithless  to  his 
trust.  On  the  whole  I  believe  that  our  material  prosperity  has 
been  matched  with  an  equal  advance  in  the  standards  of 
morality.  Never  have  we  been  so  quick  to  condemn  short- 
coming, never  so  ready  to  recognize  uprightness  of  conduct. 
Despite  these  gloomy  forebodings,  I  believe  in  the  integrity 
and  dependableness  of  the  American  people,  and  feel  sure  that 
our  national  life  is  to  be  broadened  and  elevated  by  the  experi- 
ences through  which  we  are  passing. 

The  same  forces  that  impel  to  industrial  union  likewise  impel 
to  social  amity.  As  the  work  of  the  past  has  secured  the  boon 
of  liberty,  so  the  work  of  the  future,  your  work  and  mine,  is  to 
secure  the  blessing  of  fraternity.  'Twill  be  the  greatest 
struggle  the  world  has  yet  imagined.  And  in  that  struggle, 
whatever  its  varying  fortunes,  the  men  and  women  of  Wesleyan 
University,  the  sons  and  daughters  of  our  dear  Alma  Mater, 
will  bear  no  idle  or  inconspicuous  part. 


WEDNESDAY 

JUNE  27 

COMMENCEMENT   DAY 


OF 


STEPHEN    HENRY    OLIN 


ADDRESS 
By  Stephen  Henry  Olin 

To  the  American  of  1831  the  time  in  which  he  lived  was 
full  of  interest  and  achievement.  To  us  it  seems  dull 
and  uneventful — a  period  over  which  the  historian  nods  and 
the  reader  yawns. 

There  had  been  growth  in  population  and  material  prosperity. 
There  had  been  conquest  of  the  wilderness  marvelous  when 
measured  by  the  ancient  standards — the  strength  of  a  man  and 
the  speed  of  a  horse. 

Property  had  increased,  but  the  hours  of  labor  were  long  and 
its  wages  small.  There  was  no  luxury  nor  the  abundant  wealth 
which  fosters  art  and  founds  galleries  and  museums. 

It  was  not  a  heroic  age.  There  were  old  men  who  could  tell 
of  the  campaigns  of  the  Revolution  and  one  who  had  subscribed 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  and  there  were  boys — thou- 
sands of  them — who  were  to  die  for  their  country  on  the  battle- 
field, and  one  who  was  to  sign  the  Emancipation  proclamation; 
but  political  contests  were  for  the  spoils  of  office  or  for  economic 
advantage  or  ended  in  compromises  which  brought  peace  but 
not  glory. 

Emerson  was  about  to  exchange  the  pulpit  for  the  platform; 
Longfellow  was  quitting  prose  for  poetry  and  Hawthorne  was 
meditating  "Twice  Told  Tales,"  but  it  was  still  possible  to  ask, 
"Who  reads  an  American  book?" 

The  genii  of  the  coming  time  were  beginning  to  stir  in  their 
concealment.  On  September  ist,  183 1,  the  first  locomotive 
whirled  its  train  into  Schenectady,  twelve  miles  and  a  half  in 
fifty  minutes.  In  October,  1832,  Morse  was  to  whisper  the 
promise  of  the  telegraph.  The  New  York  Stock  Exchange  was 
already  open,  and  it  was  a  dull  day  when  less  than  two  hundred 
shares  were  sold. 

Of  life  and  manners  we  are  well  informed.  Indefatigable 
Englishmen  landed  in  New  York   from   the  monthly  packets, 


no  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

steamed  up  the  Hudson  by  the  Lady  CHnton  or  the  Ariel,  jour- 
neyed to  Niagara  Falls  on  the  canal,  descended  the  Ohio  and 
the  Mississippi,  jolted  back  again  in  swinging  stages,  hurried 
through  New  England  and  went  home  to  write  volumes  upon 
the  badness  of  American  roads  and  inns  and  manners.  Captain 
Basil  Hall  even  paused  on  our  beautiful  High  Street,  but 
unluckily  he  hit  upon  the  hour  of  dinner  at  Captain  Partridge's 
Military  Academy.  It  was  "such  an  exhibition  of  feeding  or 
devouring  as  would  have  excited  the  admiration  of  a  cor- 
morant." "I  really  never,"  says  the  gallant  captain,  "saw  any- 
thing so  disagreeable."  Fenimore  Cooper,  despondent  as  is 
the  wont  of  repatriated  analysts,  found  his  countrymen  boastful, 
rude  and  narrow-minded.  To  Andrew  Jackson,  elate,  as 
becomes  the  elect  of  a  nation,  they  were  "twelve  millions  of 
happy  people  filled  with  all  the  blessings  of  liberty,  civilization 
and  religion." 

At  all  events  they  needed  education  and  they  knew  it.  In 
1 83 1  four  new  colleges  were  added  to  the  fifty-seven  already 
existing  and  Wesleyan  University,  rich  in  an  endowment  of 
twenty  thousand  dollars,  with  a  President,  two  professors  and 
a  tutor,  threw  wide  its  doors. 

The  idea  of  a  foursome  over  a  college  course  was  not  then 
so  startling  as  it  would  be  now.  Venerable  Harvard,  nearing 
the  end  of  her  second  century,  had,  indeed,  sixteen  professors, 
but  eleven  of  them  belonged  to  the  Faculties  of  Law,  Medicine 
and  Theology.  Yale  had  twelve  professors,  but  only  four  were 
in  what  we  now  call  the  college  or  the  School  of  Arts;  and  of 
these  four  the  Professor  of  Greek  and  Latin  taught  Hebrew 
also,  and  the  great  Silliman  was  Professor  of  Chemistry,  Min- 
eralogy and  Geology  and,  lest  he  might  seem  to  be  wasting  his 
time,  of  Pharmacy  as  well. 

It  is  impossible  to  view  without  regret  the  passing  of  the 
New  England  college  of  that  early  time.  The  simplicity  of  its 
equipment  enhanced  the  nobility  of  its  purpose  and  the  com- 
pleteness of  its  success.  The  type  had  become  fixed  and  seemed 
to  be  permanent.  A  little  group  of  scholars  read  with  the 
students  from  Homer  and  Virgil,  from  Demosthenes  and  Cicero 
and  Livy,  from  Sophocles  and  Horace  the  same  passages  which 
they  themselves  in  youth  had  learned  and  which  for  centuries 
had  helped  to  form  the  minds  of  all  cultivated  men.     There  was 


trq      > 


?  s 

O        D 


ft) 


^ 


> 
-    I 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  iii 

some  mathematics,  some  history,  some  rhetoric,  some  of  the 
elements  of  natural  science  in  which  knowledge  had  not  yet 
grown  wide  enough  to  become  diffident.  At  the  summit  stood 
the  antique  figure  of  the  President,  Presses  dignissimus,  clothed 
with  the  powers  of  discipline,  keeping  in  his  hand  instruction 
in  that  philosophy,  which,  although  its  progress  had  been  in 
circles,  had  since  the  time  of  Socrates  furnished  the  highest 
exercise  of  the  noblest  minds.  It  was  his  duty  to  see  to  it  that 
education  developed  not  merely  Hellenists  or  mathematicians 
but  men,  not  merely  citizens  of  the  Republic  of  Letters  (which 
in  those  days  still  claimed  allegiance  from  every  college  grad- 
uate), but  citizens  of  the  world  fitted  to  undertake  all  the  tasks 
which  an  unsophisticated  age  had  learned  to  impose. 

We  have  changed  all  that.  We  have  changed  even  the 
metaphors  which  convey  our  ideas  about  it.  Who  thinks  of 
a  great  university  as  a  fountain,  at  which  all  thirsty  minds  find 
the  same  refreshment?  It  is  rather  a  counter  where  all  bever- 
ages may  be  had  for  the  asking  and  where  for  the  most  part  even 
the  youngest  customer  is  permitted  to  mix  them  as  he  will. 

The  President  of  a  great  modern  university  must  have 
financial  ability  to  gather  and  administer  vast  endowments.  He 
must  have  administrative  skill  to  follow  his  scattered  flock  as 
it  is  led  by  devious  paths  to  divers  ends. 

But  how  can  he  maintain  the  ancient  authority  over  his 
aggregation  of  specialists,  each  confident  of  superior  acquire- 
ment in  what  to  him  is  the  most  important  branch  of  learning? 
How  difficult,  through  the  luxuriant  upgrowth  of  detailed 
knowledge  and  technical  skill,  to  point  out  the  ways  of  wisdom 
in  case  some  student  should  elect  to  walk  therein! 

It  is  no  wonder  if  the  Baccalaureate  preacher  sometimes 
passes  by  the  audience  before  him  and  devotes  himself  to  sinners 
with  whom  he  is  more  familiar — less  inscrutable  sinners — such 
as  great  statesmen  or  men  who  are  very,  very  rich. 

It  is  always  the  business  of  education  to  train  the  young 
in  the  morals  of  the  past  and  the  learning  of  the  present. 

Men  teach  the  ethics  of  the  past  because  they  know  of  none 
better.  It  is  easy  to  found  a  new  religion,  but  for  nineteen 
centuries  no  one  in  the  western  world  has  established  a  new 
code  of  morals.  Of  the  ancient  precepts  examples  must  be 
sought  in  the  past.     Our  standards  of  virtue,  like  our  standard 


^^^^^^ 


112  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

measures,  must  be  of  stuff  which  does  not  shrink  or  warp. 
Human  Hves  are  not  such  stuff.  No  man's  character  is  safe 
while  he  lives,  nor  his  reputation  while  his  friends  live,  and  no 
matter  how  long  beatification  is  postponed,  the  Devil's  Advocate 
may  always  hope  to  prevent  it  by  some  lucky  find  of  diaries  or 
letters.  And  as  with  the  classic  examples,  so  with  those 
nearer  to  us  and  more  persuasive.  A  man  sets  his  house  in 
order  and  straightway  forgets  that  it  was  not  always  clean  and 
chilly.  He  forgets  that  he  was  once  acquainted  with  the  tempta- 
tions which  now  annoy  him  by  their  riot  among  his  neighbors. 
As  historic  virtue  impresses,  so  contemporaneous  sin  startles  and 
interests  us.  Combination  and  publicity  make  offences  con- 
spicuous which  are  not  new.  Division  of  labor  enables  men  to 
be  curious  and  critical  concerning  acts  formerly  familiar  in  their 
daily  work  and  observation.  When  there  were  no  great  com- 
binations of  capital  there  was  tainted  money,  and  there  was 
tainted  beef  when  every  village  had  its  slaughter-house.  The 
virtues  themselves  conspire  to  make  us  praisers  of  the  by-gone 
time  and  content  if  the  future  shall  imitate  it.  Filial  piety 
receives  its  picture  of  the  past  from  parental  reticence,  and 
successive  generations,  each  humbly  conscious  of  its  own  back- 
sliding, have  steadily  increased  the  common  fund  of  temperance, 
toleration  and  compassion,  and  have  not  yet  exhausted  the  stock 
of  sterner  qualities  laid  up  in  ruder  times. 

The  task  of  teaching  contemporary  knowledge  has  in  the 
last  half  century  grown  more  difficult  and  complicated.  It  is 
not  merely  that  certain  sciences  have  gained  new  scope  and 
importance,  and  that  their  boundaries  are  widened,  not  by 
scattered  adventurers  but  by  organized  forces  cooperating  in 
every  land,  trained,  equipped,  stimulated  by  great  rewards. 
The  change  is  not  so  much  in  the  subjects  of  thought  as  in  the 
mode  of  thinking.  It  affects  as  well  the  teacher  who  uses  the 
formulas  of  Euclid  as  the  teacher  to  whom  the  formulas  of 
Darwin  have  grown  antiquated.  It  affects  all  thinking  men. 
There  are  new  notions  of  matter,  of  force,  of  time  and  space, 
and  new  conceptions  of  law.  We  have  come  to  regard  our 
shreds  and  fragments  of  knowledge  as  glimpses — fleeting  and 
uncertain  glimpses — of  a  seamless  garment  which  is  the  universe. 

One  great  function  of  the  modern  college,  the  development  of 
physical  training  and  sport  and  by  this  means  of  health  and 
character,  was  unknown  in  Willbur  Fisk's  day. 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  113 

The  greater  part  of  conduct  is  governed  not  by  the  laws  of  the 
land  or  the  formal  teachings  of  the  church,  but  by  habit  and 
tradition  and  taste.  The  sports  of  a  people  have  always  been  a 
school  of  its  manners.  Men  have  been  by  turns  in  large  degree 
'what  the  stadium,  or  the  amphitheater,  or  the  tilt-yard  or  the 
bull-ring  or  the  cricket-field  has  made  them.  In  183 1  our  tradi- 
tions of  sport  were  English,  inherited  through  the  Puritan  who 
hated  pleasure  and  the  colonist  who  begrudged  the  time  for 
play,  and  coarsened  by  the  rough  usage  of  the  frontiersman. 
Since  1831  there  have  come  other  millions,  to  whom  even  these 
traditions  are  unknown,  whose  standards  of  manners  are  formed 
by  the  regulations  of  armies  or  the  habits  of  aristocracies  as 
seen  from  below,  or  perhaps  in  such  schools  as  the  Mafia  or  the 
Camorra. 

It  is  a  function  of  the  colleges — in  which  each  needs  the  aid 
of  all  the  others,  in  which  each  employs  the  vigor  of  its  young 
men  and  the  experience  of  its  old  men — to  frame  the  definition 
of  manliness,  and  to  enforce  it  against  the  definitions  of  the 
race-track  and  the  professional  athlete.  Is  temperance  worth 
while,  and  discipline,  and  self-control?  Do  we  owe  constancy 
to  our  friends  and  fair  play  to  our  rivals?  Does  success  pay 
for  dishonor?  Is  it  honest  to  break  a  rule  when  the  umpire  is 
not  looking?  Is  it  gentlemanly  to  shake  a  batsman's  nerve  by 
jeers  and  gibbering?  Whatever  standards  the  colleges  estab- 
lish will  be  to  the  schools  an  example  and  to  the  next  generation 
a  habit.  Tell  us  how  men  play  foot-ball  and  we  will  know  some- 
thing of  their  courts,  their  politics  and  their  insurance  companies. 

But  wise  men  tell  us  that  publicity,  however  welcome  to 
mature  and  seasoned  scholars,  is  bad  for  boys  and  that  the 
colleges  should  withdraw  from  contests  which  attract  crowds 
and  are  described  in  the  newspapers. 

Are  churches  closed  because  the  congregations  grow  too 
large?     Shall  not  young  men  rejoice  in  their  youth? 

Rules  should  be  perfected  and  enforced,  courts  of  honor 
established  and  sustained,  but  each  college  for  its  own  sake  and 
all  for  the  sake  of  the  nation  should  keep  up  those  public  sports 
by  which  the  college  gives  its  chief,  if  not  its  only  immediate, 
collective  impulse  to  life. 

None  of  these  tasks  of  the  college — neither  the  unchangeable, 
nor  the  changing,  nor  the  new — has  here  been  left  undone. 
8 


114  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

Wesleyan  has  been  a  school  of  morals.  The  sons  have  been 
taught  the  fathers'  commandment.  There  have  been  the  ancient 
precept  and  the  modern  instance.  Each  of  us  in  his  time  has 
seen  how  good  men  live.  If  the  ultimate  sanctions  of  duty  have 
seemed  to  change,  its  immediate  obligation  has  not  been  relaxed. 
If  our  teachers  do  not  believe  with  Mr.  Wesley,  that  sin  causes 
earthquakes,  they  know  better  than  did  Mr.  Wesley  what  charity 
and  faith  and  hope  can  do  for  men  shaken  by  earthquake. 

With  the  old  morality  Wesleyan  teaches  the  new  learning.  It 
might  easily  not  have  been  so.  Modern  science  is  costly  and  the 
college  has  been  poor.  Science  threatens  dogma  and  the  college 
has  always  been  pious.  It  would  have  been  easy  to  understand 
and  not  impossible  to  forgive  if  there  had  been  an  effort  to 
cramp  the  student  to  fit  the  instruction  instead  of  broadening 
the  instruction  to  suit  the  age.  There  are  members  of  the 
Faculty  whom  the  oldest  of  us  revere  as  masters  and  the  young- 
est of  us  love  as  friends.  We  appreciate  their  learning,  their 
patience,  their  loyalty,  but  most  of  all  we  honor  the  steadfast 
courage  which  has  said,  "Come  who  will  to  Wesleyan,  Truth 
shall  come."  To  them  we  owe  it  that  the  air  of  the  new  century 
blows  fresh  and  free  through  every  class-room,  and  that  the 
college  can  serve  the  future  as  it  has  served  the  past. 

In  the  Yale  gymnasium  the  oldest  in  a  long  line  of  trophies 
won  on  land  is  the  baseball  which  the  crestfallen  Agallians  left 
in  New  Haven  on  a  hot  summer  afternoon  forty  years  ago. 
Thus,  before  colleges  began  to  meet  under  their  own  names  on 
the  ball-ground,  Wesleyan  under  a  classic  alias  paid  her  entrance 
to  the  field  of  intercollegiate  sport.  Health  and  strength  might 
have  been  developed  in  our  own  gymnasium  and  upon  our  own 
playing  field,  but  to  our  contests  with  others  we  owe  it  that  our 
seclusion,  so  favorable  to  learning,  has  not  been  an  isolation  fatal 
to  life;  and  that  our  students  may  begin  the  contests  of  man- 
hood against  rivals  whose  measure  they  have  taken  in  the  sports 
of  youth.  In  these  forty  years  there  have  been  victories  well 
won  and  defeats  well  endured.  Sound  traditions  have  grown 
up.  Fair  play  has  been  respected.  These  boys  have  held  in 
their  hands  something  of  your  honor  and  of  mine  and  they  have 
not  stained  it.  College  spirit  has  risen.  There  have  come 
emulation,  self-sacrifice,  devotion. 

Wise  men  tell  us  that  the  college,  and  especially  the  small 
college,  is  doomed  at  an  early  day  to  disappear.     "Life  is  short," 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  115 

they  say,  "and  art  grows  longer  and  longer.  This  is  a  practi- 
cal age.  The  preparatory  schoolmaster  needs  more  time,  the 
professional  schoolmaster  needs  more  time.  We  can  no  longer 
afford  to  devote  four  years  on  the  threshold  of  manhood  to  the 
mere  Humanities.  This  schoolboy  must  take  his  law-book  and 
that  one  his  scalpel  and  work  at  something  which  brings  money." 
If  this  be  the  tendency  of  the  time,  it  is  a  tendency  to  be 
deplored,  and  the  heads  of  great  universities  and  the  masters  of 
schools,  instead  of  dividing  the  inheritance  of  the  college  while 
it  yet  lives,  might  well  make  every  effort  to  prolong  that  precious 
life  and  crown  it  with  greater  honor.  Our  educational  system 
needs  strengthening  rather  where  it  touches  the  unities  than  where 
it  concerns  the  divergencies  of  life.  For  the  last  few  months 
there  has  been  going  on  throughout  the  land  a  grand  inquest 
into  social  conditions.  It  is  a  time  of  prosperity — of  material 
prosperity,  greater  than  ever  has  been  known  and  so  general  and 
widespread  that  the  pessimist  who  denies  its  existence  must 
always  point  us  to  some  newly  founded  Ghetto  or  Lithuanian 
colony.  Even  there  he  finds  people  so  content  with  their  lot  that 
they  are  bringing  their  kinsfolk  by  shiploads  to  share  it.  In  this 
prosperous  time  we  have  been  scrutinizing  the  conspicuous 
products — the  chief  instruments — the  types  and  illustrations  of 
prosperity — great  insurance  companies,  teachers  of  thrift  and 
altruism — great  railroads,  carriers  over  half  the  land — industrial 
corporations  which  have  taken  over  a  great  part  of  the  work  of 
the  people.  We  do  not  hear  that  there  is  any  lack  of  highly- 
trained  actuaries  or  engineers  or  managers  for  these  enterprises. 
There  is  no  lack  of  professional  accomplishment.  The  need  is 
of  common  honesty — of  common  regard  for  the  rights  of 
others — of  the  self-respect  which  puts  men  above  peculation  and 
bribery.  The  defect  is  in  ideals — in  character.  With  these, 
colleges  have  much,  and  professional  schools  have  little  to  do. 
The  man  who  reaches  his  bachelor's  degree  without  an  instinct 
of  honesty  or  a  sense  of  honor  is  not  likely  to  acquire  either. 

Rome  fell — not  for  lack  of  skilful  architects,  or  learned  law- 
yers, or  trained  generals,  but  because  there  were  no  more 
Romans.     The  state  had  lost  the  art  of  teaching  virtue. 

There  was  a  time  on  the  Continent  of  Europe  when  all  men 
bore  arms.  Then  came  the  day  of  professional  soldiership. 
Training  became  more  severe  and  continuous,  until  in  the  time  of 


ii6  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

the  Great  Frederick  no  one  dreamed  that  the  state  could  be 
defended  except  by  men  drilled  their  whole  life  long.  There 
came  a  great  peril  and  the  system  changed.  Every  man  for  the 
sake  of  the  Fatherland  devoted  three  years  to  learning  the 
essentials  of  the  art  of  war.  The  professional  army  vanished. 
There  were  no  longer  soldiers  comparable  with  the  veteran 
hussars  of  Ziethen  or  the  battalions  of  Schwerin,  but  the  public 
force  had  become  irresistible.     It  was  the  nation  in  arms. 

There  are  times  of  crisis  when  orderly  progress  is  checked  or 
liberties  and  rights  are  threatened — when  the  skill  of  professional 
men,  however  accomplished,  is  of  little  avail.  Public  safety  must 
rest  upon  a  broader  basis.  Honesty  alone  would  not  suffice. 
There  are  dangers  against  which  only  a  lettered  nation  is  a  nation 
armed.  At  such  times  it  will  seem  a  little  thing  whether  lawyers 
have  spent  a  year  or  two  more  or  less  over  their  precedents  or 
engineers  with. their  formulas  or  chemists  with  their  gallipots; 
but  it  will  be  a  great  thing  if  throughout  the  land  men  who  in 
these  college  barracks  have  learned  the  same  discipline  and  the 
same  inspiration  flock  back  to  the  colors  to  defend  the  civilization 
which  the  scholar  moulded  and  developed  and  which  the  scholar 
will  maintain. 

An  institution  is  a  device  by  which  the  purpose  of  an  individual 
lays  hold  on  the  immortality  of  the  race.  When,  after  seventy- 
five  years,  a  foundation  answering  to  the  needs  of  those  who  use 
it  answers  still  to  the  prayers  of  those  who  planned  it,  we  may 
well  hope  that  it  is  destined  to  endure. 

But  however  this  may  be,  for  us  this  college  stands  for  the 
things  which  abide  as  the  flying  years  slip  by:  A  friendly  and 
indulgent  Fame,  an  undying  Family,  a  State  whose  demand  for 
loyalty  is  direct  and  familiar  as  in  a  Greek  City. 

Is  it  four  years  since  first  her  gentle  hand  was  laid  on  us  or  is 
it  four  and  sixty  years?  There  is  remembrance  and  hope  and 
deep  affection  for  the  Foster  Mother  of  us  all. 


HEKBEkT    WKLCH 


ADDRESS 

By  President  Herbert  Welch 

ifaitS  antr  JntelUctual  ^toQtt00 

THIS  theme,  serious  though  it  may  appear  for  a  festival 
occasion,  can  not  be  wholly  out  of  place.  For  the  festival 
which  we  celebrate  is  that  of  a  Christian  college, — an  institution, 
that  is  to  say,  which  stands  for  both  the  aesthetic  and  the  moral, 
both  the  intellectual  and  the  spiritual.  Wesleyan  University  is 
Christian:  Christian  in  its  history,  Christian  in  its  influence. 
Christian  in  its  conception  of  culture.  Christian  in  its  constituency. 
Christian  in  the  personnel  of  its  teaching  staff.  Christian  in  its 
motive  and  its  ideals.  Must  it  be  less  excellent  as  a  college  in 
order  to  be  thus  thoroughly,  consistently,  consumedly  Christian, — 
permeated  and  vitalized  from  root  to  blossom  by  the  spirit  of 
religion  ? 

The^  question  is  not  so  simple  as  it  seems.  Some  there  have 
been,  some  there  are,  who  would  deny  the  legitimate  place  of 
human  learning  in  religion ;  some  who  would  shut  religion  from 
the  temple  of  learning.  In  the  early  Christian  church,  two  con- 
tending parties  could  be  found:  one,  remembering  only  the 
splendor  of  truth  and  of  beauty,  urged  that  all  the  learning  of 
the  heathen  world, — its  philosophy,  its  science,  its  art, — might 
have  a  place  within  the  Christian  realm ;  the  other,  remembering 
the  immoralities  of  pagan  peoples,  the  absurdities  of  pagan 
mythology,  the  heresies  growing  out  of  pagan  importations,  the 
aristocratic  nature  of  pagan  culture,  the  scorn  of  pagan,  scholars 
for  the  followers  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  looked  with  suspicious 
eyes  upon  this  truth  and  this  beauty,  and  would  have  none  of  it! 
From  the  latter  side  Chrysostom  called  learning  "folly",  and 
"child's  play" ;  from  the  former  Origen  claimed  that  all  knowl- 
edge, if  rightly  studied,  would  lead  up  to  Christianity,  and  might 
be  claimed  by  Christian  students  as  their  rightful  heritage. 
These  two  schools  of  thought  and  feeling  still  exist.     To  which 


Ii8  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

we  belong  can  not  be  doubtful.  Wesley  an  University  has  stood, 
and  stands,  for  the  joint  claim  of  head  and  of  heart;  not  simply 
for  the  reconciHation,  but  for  the  union,  of  learning  and  religion; 
for  the  beHef  that  intellectual  progress  and  faith  are  and  should 
be,  now  and  forever,  one  and  inseparable. 

If  man  is  a  unit,  then  all  that  goes  to  make  up  humanity  should 
harmoniously  dwell  and  grow.  Spiritual  gain  should  not  mean 
physical  or  mental  loss  or  deterioration.  Science  and  art  should 
be  the  familiar  friends  of  piety.  Revivals  of  learning  and  of 
religion  should  be  expected  to  occur  almost  simultaneously. 
Darkness  should  typify  at  once  ignorance  and  sin.  Without 
falling  into  the  old  Greek  error  by  affirming  that  virtue  is  synony- 
mous with  knowledge,  let  us  plead  that  virtue  and  knowledge  may 
walk,  have  walked,  should  walk,  hand  in  hand. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  they  are  of  equal  importance  for 
the  world's  advance.  Mr.  W.  H.  Mallock  in  his  "Recon- 
struction of  Religious  Belief"  has  recently  emphasized  the  famil- 
iar truth  that  all  civilization  is  dependent  on  faith  in  freedom 
and  God  and  immortality.  Mr.  Benjamin  Kidd  a  few  years 
ago  made  a  strong  argument  in  his  "Social  Evolution"  to  show 
that  intellectual  progress  was  by  no  means  the  same  as  civiliza- 
tion, and  that  in  some  cases  civilization  advanced  without  intel- 
lectual gains.  "In  average  mental  development,"  he  asserted, 
"we  are  not  the  superiors,  but  the  inferiors  of  the  ancient  Greek 
people."  In  isolated  giants  like  Socrates  and  Aristotle  and 
Phidias,  as  well  as  in  the  general  level  of  intellectual  powers, 
the  Greeks  were  the  ablest  race  that  ever  lived, — as  far  above 
the  Englishmen  or  the  Americans  of  to-day,  if  we  are  to  believe 
Mr.  Kidd,  as  these  are  above  the  African  negroes.  The  things 
which  seem  to  be  our  achievements  are  really  the  total  achieve- 
ments of  the  world's  history.  The  steady  advance  in  civiliza- 
tion is  dependent,  not  upon  any  necessity  that  each  generation 
shall  be  in  intellectual  grade  above  the  one  preceding,  or 
that  the  intellectual  classes  shall  produce  and  reproduce  the 
leaders  of  activity  (for  our  society  tends  to  renew  itself  rather 
from  the  base),  but  it  is  dependent  upon  the  quickening  influence 
of  religion.  It  is  not  mental  capacity  and  power  in  which  the  low 
races  are  deficient,  but  social  environment.  Real  progress  is 
social  in  its  nature,  and  the  social  relation  and  motive  are  essen- 
tially religious.     To  quote  Mr.  Kidd's  own  words,    "The  evolu- 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  119 

tion  which  is  slowly  proceeding  in  human  society  is  not  primarily 
intellectual,  but  religious  in  character."  Not  mastery,  but  service, 
makes  civilization  possible.  Religion  is  at  the  heart  of  all  genuine 
progress. 

Mr.  Kidd's  argument  may  prove  too  much ;  but  even  admitting 
it  to  be  true,  then  that  which  contributes  to  the  enrichment  of  the 
religious  life  and  the  strengthening  of  the  religious  impulse  makes 
mightily  for  social  progress,  for  the  realization  of  that  Kingdom 
of  God  which  is  likewise  the  Kingdom  of  man,  the  dream  and 
goal  of  all  noblest  aspiration.  Now,  among  the  forces  which 
enrich  the  religious  life  and  strengthen  the  religious  impulse,  not 
last  or  least  is  intellectual  progress.  The  church  may  precede  the 
college,  but  can  not  exist  long  and  strong  without  it.  Religion  at 
the  heart  of  society  is  often  choked  by  accretions.  It  is  among 
the  functions  of  intellectual  progress  to  clear  away  the  rubbish 
and  give  the  religious  instincts  free  play. 

A  brief  glance  at  Christian  history  will  suffice  to  indicate  the 
debt  under  which  Christianity  has  been  placed  at  its  times  of  crisis 
by  the  ministry  of  learning.  In  the  early  centuries  learning  was 
often  discounted  in  the  estimation  of  earnest  men.  The  pre- 
Christian  world  had  gone  farther  in  culture  than  in  faith,  and  to 
the  first  Christians,  the  comprehension  of  the  supreme  moral  needs 
about  them,  the  expectation  of  the  world's  approaching  end,  the 
harrying  by  persecution,  the  unfriendliness  of  learned  pagans,  the 
dealing  with  degraded  and  later  barbarous  peoples,  gave  little 
encouragement  or  opportunity  for  culture.  But  even  the  early 
church  had  its  catechetical  schools,  and  history  had  not  run  far 
before  the  intellectual  development  of  the  church  had  transformed 
its  life.  Greek  thought  turned  Christianity  away  from  simple 
Judaism  and  made  it  theoretical,  speculative,  contentious. 
Whether  orthodox  or  heretical,  it  became  metaphysical.  Such 
change  has  seemed  to  some  but  poor  service,  yet  what  would 
Christianity  have  been  without  metaphysics?  Cry  as  we  will 
against  dogma,  the  religion  which  does  not  face  the  questions  of 
universal  meaning  and  of  perennial  interest  will  stand  discredited 
before  the  court  of  reason.  The  flower,  to  be  sure,  lives,  and 
knows  nothing  of  life.  It  toils  not,  neither  does  it  philosophize. 
But  man  philosophizes,  by  the  very  nature  of  his  being.  Take  a 
single  instance :   Religion,  we  are  told,  is  nothing  but  "the  life  of 


I20  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

God  in  the  soul  of  man."  True, — and  simple.  But  what  is 
"life"?  And  what  is  "God"?  And  what  is  "soul"?  And  what 
is  "man"?  The  conception  of  God,  his  personality,  character, 
activity;  and  of  man,  his  constitution,  duties,  possibilities,  will 
make  religion  a  great  or  a  contemptible  thing.  A  recent  writer, 
Dr.  Charles  Cuthbert  Hall,  has  reminded  us  with  emphasis  that 
only  a  metaphysical  religion  is  equipped  for  world  conquest 
among  races  where  the  contemplative  rather  than  the  historical 
habit  rules. 

Remembering,  again,  that  religion  can  not  dwell  forever  on  the 
Mount  of  Vision,  however  high  the  truth,  we  may  recall  that 
Roman  thought  brought  ethics  to  the  front,  and  made  the  life  of 
service  essential  in  Christian  character.  It  may  always  be  freely 
granted  that  philosophy,  whether  Greek  metaphysics  or  Roman 
ethics,  is  no  substitute  for  religion,  that  its  appeal  is  limited  and 
its  motives  not  dynamitic ;  but  a  religion  that  is  not  philosophical 
is  thereby  proved  to  be  impotent. 

Once  more,  the  great  Protestant  Reformation,  when  it  trans- 
formed Christendom,  had  back  of  the  religious  revolution  an  intel- 
lectual movement  as  wide  as  the  continent.  Something  had  hap- 
pened in  Europe.  The  Crusades,  the  growth  of  chivalry,  the 
development  of  cities  and  commerce  and  wealth,  had  come  into 
the  Dark  Ages;  but  more.  That  exaltation  of  the  individual, 
that  sheer  thrust  upon  personal  responsibility  which  has  proved  the 
origin  of  much  that  is  best  in  modem  civilization,  was  the  strength 
of  the  Reformation.  It  came  from  whom?  from  where? 
Through  these  centuries  had  been  gathering  forces  that  burst 
out  at  last  in  a  refreshing  flood.  The  chantry  schools,  the  guilds, 
the  beginnings  of  a  system  of  public  instruction,  the  writing  of  a 
romantic  literature,  the  invention  of  printing,  the  enlargement  of 
the  intellectual  horizon  by  the  discovery  of  new  worlds,  all  con- 
tributed their  share.  The  monasteries  were  depositories  not  only 
of  formal  religion,  but  of  learning,  which  was  bound  to  break  up 
the  formalism  and  apathy  of  the  church.  The  eflforts  of  scholars 
to  subdue  all  learning  to  Christian  forms  and  put  it  under  Christian 
sanctions,  the  reassertion  of  purely  intellectual  interests,  and  the 
insistence  that  intellectual  and  religious  interests  must  be  made 
one, — these  were  prophecies  of  a  new  day.  Then  came  the 
foundation  of  the  great  universities.  Abelard  at  Paris  was  teach- 
ing with  his  thousands  of  pupils  about  him.     Oxford  was  begun. 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  121 

Europe  was  being  born  anew.  The  Renaissance  was  only  a  return 
to  nature  and  to  classical  sources  with  their  varied  interests  in 
literature  and  art;  and  the  Renaissance,  with  its  springtime 
breath,  came  before  the  Reformation.  Petrarch,  and  Boccaccio, 
and  Dante  preceded  Savonarola.  Ascham  and  the  great  English 
public  schools,  Colet  and  Erasmus  and  Sir  Thomas  More  began 
to  stir  the  brain  of  Britain  before  its  heart  was  opened  by  the 
preaching  of  its  Protestants  and  the  death  of  its  martyrs.  The 
Reformation  meant  that  the  personal  was  above  the  ecclesiasti- 
cal, the  spiritual  above  the  material,  the  real  and  vital  above  the 
formal.  It  meant  that  religion  was  human  and  practical  rather 
than  scholastic;  that  it  was  to  be  taken  out  of  the  church  into 
the  soul,  the  home,  the  shop,  the  capital.  And  the  view  of  life 
that  lay  behind  this  view  of  religion  was  the  intellectual  product 
of  the  Renaissance.  This  great  Reformation,  preceded  and 
accompanied  and  followed  by  exploration  and  invention,  by  the 
development  of  poetry  and  drama  and  art,  stands  as  an  eternal 
witness  that  the  revivalism  which  is  unintelligent,  narrow  in  its 
scope,  can  not  be  permanent;  that  the  only  revivalism  which  is 
safe  is  that  which  is  human  in  its  interests  and  broad  in  its 
sympathies. 

The  service  of  intellectual  progress  to  faith  may  be  seen  again 
in  the  powerful  religious  awakening  of  the  eighteenth  century  in 
England.  Not  only  was  it  marvelous  in  its  effects  upon  educa- 
tion, manners,  literature,  national  temper,  but  its  beginnings  were 
linked  with  intellectual  forces  of  no  mean  grade.  Before  John 
Wesley  and  his  preachers  came  Bacon  and  Harvey  and  Hobbes 
and  Newton  and  Milton  and  Locke  and  the  men  of  Queen  Anne. 
Methodism  was  born  in  a  university.  It  built  a  school  almost  as 
soon  as  a  meeting-house;  and  so  effectually  did  Wesley  teach 
that  it  was  "impossible  for  a  people  to  grow  in  grace  without 
reading,"  that  the  early  itinerants  were  all  book-agents,  and 
American  Methodists  had  no  sooner  organized  themselves  into  a 
church  than  they  founded  a  college.  It  took  two  conflagrations 
to  burn  out  their  first  enthusiasm  and  make  them  postpone  their 
efforts  at  higher  education  until  that  later  and  more  auspicious 
day  when  this  Wesleyan  University  was  born. 

Why  should  one  doubt  that  now  again  learning  is  to  minister 
to  religion,  and  that  the  philosophy,  the  history,  the  literature, 
the  education,  the  science,  which  made  the  nineteenth  a  century 


122  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

among  centuries  are  to  herald  the  dawning  of  a  religious  epoch 
whose  like  the  world  has  never  seen? 


If  I  may  venture  for  a  moment  to  point  out  some  special  services 
of  intellectual  progress  to  faith,  I  may  suggest  that  intellectual 
progress  enlarges  the  field  of  religion  by  revealing  its  content 
and  purpose.  Religion  deals  with  God,  with  nature,  with  man, 
with  righteousness.  It  grows  with  its  knowledge  of  the  world 
and  of  life.  It  specializes  and  intensifies,  as  study  discloses  new 
points  of  moral  and  social  need.  It  seeks  the  right;  and  intel- 
lectual progress  with  its  exposition  of  family  and  property  and 
military  and  political  problems  helps  to  answer  the  question, 
"What  is  right?" 

Intellectual  progress  gives  to  religion  reverence  for  law  by 
showing  the  depth  and  the  width  of  its  working.  It  makes 
natural  the  attitude  of  wonder  and  awe  in  the  presence  of  the 
inexplicable.  It  spells  out  solemn  lessons  as  it  searches  into  the 
mysteries  of  heredity,  displaying  no  arbitrary  caprice,  but  stead- 
fast rule,  behind  the  puzzle.  It  shows  that  law  and  freedom  are 
not  opposites,  but  come  to  their  highest  perfection  side  by  side. 

Intellectual  progress  broadens  the  relationships  and  judgments 
of  religion,  dinning  into  its  ears  the  value  of  freedom  and  of 
truth,  quenching  fanaticism,  and  giving  the  wider  outlook  which 
brings  a  sympathy  with  diverse  forms  of  belief  and  endeavor. 

Intellectual  progress  tests  the  dogmas  of  religion,  its  very 
assaults  inflicting  the  wounds  of  a  friend.  Even  the  infidel  who 
by  his  well-aimed  shots  causes  the  wooden  traditions  to  splinter 
and  fly,  leaving  bare  the  steel  fortress  of  truth,  has  done  a 
friendly  office  to  that  religion  which  desires  the  truth,  the  whole 
truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth. 

Intellectual  progress  strengthens  the  foundations  of  religious 
faith.  By  that  knowledge  of  nature  and  history  and  philosophy 
which  places  Christianity  in  its  true  setting,  it  aifords  new  reason 
for  confidence  in  the  eternal  truths  revealed  through  Jesus  Christ. 
The  scientific  temper  in  religion,  if  carried  unshrinkingly  to  its 
conclusion,  is  all  that  faith  need  ask.  The  readiness  to  face  all 
the  facts,  the  willingness  to  learn  and  to  retract,  which  mark  the 
true  scientist,  prepare  one,  as  Bacon  long  ago  remarked,  to  enter 
the  kingdom  of  Heaven  also  like  a  little  child.     The  race  that  can 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  123 

say  with  Plato,  "Let  us  follow  the  argument,  wherever  it  leads," 
will  surely  be  led  into  light ! 

Religion  has  contended,  not  once  but  a  thousand  times,  against 
the  "oppositions  of  science,  falsely  so  called" ;  and  against  the 
advance  of  scientific  truth  theology  has  fought  on  many  a  welter- 
ing field.  Scarcely  a  new  discovery  of  speculative  or  practical 
science  that  has  not  been  looked  upon  with  hatred  or  with  dread 
by  some  faint-hearted  and  short-sighted  Christians.  But,  steadilv 
pressing  forward,  science  has  been  seen  to  hold  in  her  hands  not 
swords,  but  gifts,  for  religion.  Evolution,  propounded  as  an 
inclusive  theory  of  the  shaping  of  worlds  and  the  world  and 
life,  proves  not  to  destroy  faith  but  to  illuminate  it;  and  with 
its  suggestions  concerning  morals  and  Scriptures  and  theology 
to  exalt  the  God,  who  in  a  carpenter-creation  seemed  to  be  chiefly 
power,  into  a  God  of  boundless  and  surpassing  wisdom.  Philos- 
ophy and  science  together  have  brought  into  human  thinking  the 
doctrine  of  an  immanent  God,  and  theology  trembled  to  see  God 
brought  from  His  heavens  into  trees,  and  stars,  and  men.  But 
behold  how  marvelously,  as  men  have  seen  that  God  is  in  the 
world,  in  its  history,  in  its  Bible,  in  its  religious  systems,  is  truth 
simplified  and  the  hearts  of  men  are  comforted! 

Thus  has  intellectual  progress  been  ministering  to  faith,  open- 
ing paths,  removing  stones  of  stumbling,  calling  onward  and 
upward.  It  is  not  the  substitute  but  the  servant  of  faith.  To 
say  that  the  cultured  should  care  less  for  religion,  is  to  say  that 
the  man  who  has  climbed  a  mountain  should  care  less  for  the  sky. 
He  may  imagine  that  his  mountain-top  is  the  summit  of  the 
universe,  it  is  true;  but  if  he  will  but  lift  his  eyes,  he  will  see 
a  bigger  and  a  bluer  heaven  than  has  ever  broken  -upon  the  vision 
of  him  who  keeps  his  home  within  the  valley.  Did  Matthew 
Arnold  speak  truly  when  he  defined  culture  as  "the  study  and 
pursuit  of  perfection"?  Then  must  man  be  ever  mindful  that 
his  home  is  even  beyond  the  mountain's  peak. 

Here  stands  he,  shaping  wings  to  fly. 
Like  the  bird  on  its  tilting  twig,  he  is  care-free  before  the 
expanses  and  abysses  that  open, 

Knowing  that  he  has  wings. 
Culture  leads  him  by  the  hand  until  there  is  no  higher  rock  to 
mount ;   then,  pointing  to  the  blue  infinity,  she  can  but  cry  to  his 
eager  soul,   "Now  fly!" 


124  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

But  culture,  while  powerless  to  achieve  the  highest, — how  much 
has  she  achieved  by  leading  men  thus  upward  from  the  swamps 
and  mists,  and  gesturing  toward  the  open  sky?  The  greatest 
victories  of  religious  history  have  been  wrought  by  the  scholars  of 
religion.  Here  is  a  people  to  be  lifted  from  a  bondage  worse 
than  death,  to  be  transfigured  from  a  mob  into  a  nation,  to  be 
organized,  generalled,  tutored,  established, — to  whose  hands  shall 
the  task  be  entrusted?  Out  of  a  king's  palace,  by  way  of  the 
desert,  comes  one  "learned  in  all  the  wisdom  of  the  Egyptians," 
all  that  this  ancient  world  can  teach  him  by  its  priests  and 
its  schools;  and  Moses,  the  scholar  of  the  Old  Testament, 
becomes  the  hero  of  the  Old  Testament,  the  inspiration  of  a 
mighty  history.  Here  is  a  new  Gospel  to  be  proclaimed  to  a  needy 
world,  the  most  splendid  enterprise  of  the  ages  to  be  undertaken ; 
who  shall  be  its  chief  advocate  before  princes  and  peasants? 
From  the  feet  of  Gamaliel  comes  a  young  Jew  of  Tarsus,  with 
all  that  the  Greek  and  Hebrew  learning  of  the  day  could  give  him, 
he  too  coming  by  way  of  the  desert  where  God  dwells  alone; 
and  Paul,  the  intellectual  giant  of  the  ApK>stles,  the  trained  man 
of  the  schools  and  of  the  solitudes,  lays  the  foundation  of  a  new 
civilization  for  the  continents.  The  great  men  of  the  Christian 
church,  Origen  and  Jerome  and  Augustine,  have  been  its  great 
scholars.  Galileo  with  his  telescope  and  his  "None  the  less,  it 
moves,"  is  the  Christian  student,  opening  to  men  a  new  vision  of 
the  grandeur  of  the  skies.  Huss  coming  from  the  University  of 
Prague,  to  have  his  ashes  scattered  on  the  Rhine  in  witness  to  the 
truth  for  which  he  died,  Wyclif  yonder  in  Oxford  and  Calvin  at 
Paris,  Luther  from  the  University  of  Wittenberg,  are  examples  of 
the  Christian  scholars  who  have  moulded  Christian  history. 

Faith,  if  it  be  genuine,  must  fruit  in  deeds.  Does  intellectual 
progress  hinder  or  help  in  the  great  work  that  is  set  to  our  age  and 
to  every  age?  Modern  education  is  said  to  produce  critics  and 
pessimists.  If  it  be  so,  and  if  this  be  all,  then  let  the  colleges  be 
closed,  that  the  political  service,  the  social  reform,  the  Christian 
evangelism  of  which  the  world  stands  in  sore  need  may  prosper ! 
But  who  that  surveys  his  country  and  his  time  with  impartial 
eyes  can  so  believe?  Bismarck  may  have  been  right  or  wrong 
when  he  declared  that  one-third  of  the  graduates  of  the  German 
universities  ruled  the  German  Empire.  Macaulay  may  have  been 
right  or  wrong  when  he  asserted  that  if  one  would  glance  over 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  125 

the  calendars  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge  Universities  for  the  last 
two  hundred  years,  he  would  find  there  the  names  of  the  men 
who  have  created  modern  England.  But  certain  it  is  that  while 
only  one  in  a  hundred  of  our  American  men  have  come  from 
the  colleges,  seven  of  every  ten  of  the  notable  successes  of  our 
day  are  college  men.  In  them  we  find,  provided  education  has 
not  degenerated  into  mere  bookishness,  enthusiasm  tempered  by 
sanity,  carried  to  efficiency. 

I  do  not  forget  that  Mr.  Wendell  Phillips  years  ago,  in  his  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  oration  at  Harvard,  arraigned  American  scholarship 
almost  with  bitterness  because  it  had  so  poorly  served  the  land. 
But  I  do  not  forget  that  when  Mr.  George  William  Curtis  under- 
took to  answer  him,  he  had  the  bulk  of  the  facts  upon  his  side. 
He  needed  not  to  ignore  the  great  men  with  little  schooling, 
Washington,  and  Franklin,  and  Jackson,  and  Lincoln, — "tallest 
white  angel  of  a  thousand  years," — but  he  could  point  out  that  the 
pen  which  wrote  the  Declaration  of  Independence  was  held  by  a 
graduate  of  William  and  Mary  College,  Thomas  Jefferson;  that 
the  ablest  defender  of  that  Declaration  was  John  Adams,  a  gradu- 
ate of  Harvard  College ;  that  the  man  called  "the  Father  of  the 
Constitution"  was  a  graduate  of  Princeton  College,  James  Madi- 
son ;  and  that  the  man  whose  advocacy  made  possible  the  adoption 
of  that  immortal  document  was  Alexander  Hamilton,  a  student  of 
Columbia,  then  King's,  College.  He  could  remind  us  that  the 
great  servants  of  our  country  abroad  had  been  among  the  great 
scholars  of  the  Republic,  Irving,  and  Lowell,  and  Bancroft,  and 
Motley.  He  could  point  to  Webster  of  Dartmouth,  and  Sumner 
of  Harvard,  and  Grant  of  West  Point,  and  Garfield  of  Williams, 
and  Hay  of  Brown.  And  if  Mr.  Curtis  were  living  to-day,  what 
an  array  of  college  men  would  he  find  laying  aside  ease  and  com- 
fort to  purify  and  uplift  the  life  of  the  nation!  They  come,  a 
great  throng,  Jerome  from  Amherst,  and  Folk  from  Vanderbilt, 
and  Fairbanks  and  Pattison  from  Ohio  Wesleyan,  and  Beveridge 
from  Depauw,  and  Reid  from  Miami,  and  Knapp  from  Wesleyan, 
and  Dolliver  from  West  Virginia,  and  La  Follette  from  Wiscon- 
sin, and  Shaw  from  Cornell,  and  White  and  Taft  from  Yale,  and 
Root  from  Hamilton,  and  Lodge  and  Choate  and  Porter  and 
Roosevelt  from  Harvard,  and  many  another  college  man, — men 
of  diverse  gifts  and  ambitions,  but  men  upon  whom  the  hands  of 
God  and  of  the  college  have  been  laid,  men  of  character  and  of 


126  SEVENTY-FIFTH  ANNIVERSARY 

culture,  the  men  who  bear  in  their  keeping  the  destinies  of  this 
western  world.     The  men  of  intellect  have  likewise  proved  them- 
selves men  of  faith,  of  vision,  of  daring,  and  of  persistent  power. 
So  shall  it  be  forever !     When 

Some  great  cause,  God's  new  Messiah,  offering  each  the  bloom  or  blight, 
Parts  the  goats  upon  the  left  hand,  and  the  sheep  upon  the  right, 

among  the  patriots  who  stand  out  for  the  defense  of  all  that  is 
holy  and  true  within  this  dear  land,  will  be  found  the  Christian 
scholars  of  the  Republic,  offering  themselves  a  living  sacrifice 
upon  the  altars  raised  for  the  service  of  Almighty  God.  With  a 
lofty  patriotism  they  make  their  vow  to  their  country : 

Among  the  nations  bright  beyond  compare, 

What  were  our  lives  without  thee  ? 
What  all  our  lives  to  save  thee  ? 
We  reck  not  what  we  gave  thee, 

We  will  not  dare  to  doubt  thee, 
But  ask  whatever  else,  and  we  will  dare. 

The  knight  who  spurred  out  in  the  verse  of  Edmund  Spenser 
for  the  defense  of  Purity  and  Innocence,  did  not  pass  from  the 
earth  when  Spenser  died.  He  is  still  living  and  setting  out  upon 
new  quests  in  this  twentieth  century.  We  have  been  perhaps 
dazzled  for  a  time  by  that  scientific  progress  which  made  Mr. 
Wallace  put  the  nineteenth  century  as  the  equal  of  all  the 
centuries  that  had  gone  before  it.  The  knowledge  of  nature,  the 
mastery  of  physical  forces  has  seemed,  it  may  be,  to  be  not  only 
the  means  but  the  end  of  life.  But  through  all  recent  educational 
addresses  has  been  sounding  a  significant  note, — the  supremacy 
of  character  as  a  preparation  for  life  and  as  the  final  object  of 
education,  the  exaltation  of  the  Bible  and  of  moral  ideals,  and  the 
inescapable  necessity  that  culture,  if  it  is  to  be  complete,  must 
embrace  religion.  We  are  told  that  there  is  one  college  student  to 
every  730  people  living  in  this  country.  The  fact  is  full  of 
promise,  if  the  character  of  our  colleges  be  preserved.  In  these 
must  true  learning  and  true  religion  Idc  recognized  not  as  foes,  but 
as  allies.  The  religion  that  separates  itself  from  culture  is  fana- 
tical or  formal;  the  culture  that  ignores  religion  is  mutilated. 
The  denominational  college,  including  seventy  per  cent,  of  the 
colleges  of  the  land,  is  even  in  this  twentieth  century  not  an 
anachronism.  As  the  State  becomes  more  human  and  more  Chris- 
tian in  its  spirit,  it  gives  more  and  more  care  to  the  training  of  its 


WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY  .  127 

youth.  But  the  State,  compelled  in  this  land  of  religious  indepen- 
dence to  dissociate  itself  from  organized  religious  bodies,  can  not 
so  directly,  so  concretely,  so  effectively,  deal  with  religious 
problems  and  progress  as  the  Church.  No  one  would  think  of 
defending  in  this  day  a  sectarian  college,  an  institution  whose 
chief  reason  for  being  is  the  purpose  of  making  sectarian  con- 
verts. The  Church  goes  into  higher  education  not  for  its  own 
sake,  but  for  its  students'  sake  and  for  the  world's  sake.  In  its 
greater  freedom  to  combine  with  intellectual  training  that  social 
spirit  which  finds  its  springs  in  Christian  brotherhood,  that 
breadth  of  interest  which  characterizes  a  truly  Christian  concep- 
tion of  life,  that  atmosphere  which  is  electric  with  Christian  ideals, 
that  direct  and  personal  evangelistic  effort  which  may  lead 
students  to  the  sources  of  Christian  power,  the  denominational 
college  has  its  justification  and  its  pride ! 

Hail,  then,  to  Wesleyan  where,  for  three-fourths  of  a  century, 
learning  and  religion  have  dwelt  so  sweetly  together, — Wes- 
leyan with  its  atmosphere  of  intellectual  freedom  and  religious 
reverence ! 

Hail  to  the  men  of  these  days,  the  peers  of  those,  now  seen  to 
be  giants,  who  filled  the  early  days  with  splendor ! 

And  hail  to  the  men  of  the  future;  may  they  make  the  later 
history  of  this  house  more  glorious  than  that  of  its  beginnings! 


I 


'Mm^ 


^m 


J I 


APPENDIX    I 


COMMITTEES 


(HammxttttB. 


General  Committee. 
{Trustees.)  (Faculty.) 

Bradford  P.  Raymond.  Morris  B.  Crawford. 

Charles  L.  Rockwell.  Herbert  W.  Conn. 

Edmund  M.  Mills.  William  J.  James. 

{Alumni.) 
John  C.  Clark. 
Waters  B.  Day. 
Walter  B.  Wilson. 


Committee  on  Entertainment. 

Karl  P.  Harrington. 
William  J.  James. 


Committee  on  Publications. 

William  J.  James. 

Caleb  T.  Winchester. 

Morris  B.  Crawford. 


Committee  on  Commencement  Luncheon. 

Walter  P.  Bradley. 

Robert  H.  Fife^  Jr. 
George  M.  Dutcher. 

Howard  R.  Reiter. 

Committee  on  Illumination  of  Campus. 
Walter  G.  Cady. 


134  APPENDIX 

Committee  on  Campus  Rally. 

William  B.  Davis. 

Karl  P.  Harrington. 

Clifford  L.  Waite. 

Committee  on  Seating,  Etc. 

Caleb  T.  Winchester. 

Morris  B.  Crawford. 

A.  C.  Armstrong. 

Marshal. 
A.  C.  Armstrong. 


CIRCULARS,    ANNOUNCEMENTS 


APPENDIX  137 

{Circular  sent  to  Alumni.'] 

Wesley  an  University 
Committee  y 

on  the  entertainment  0/ 

Com^nencement  Visitors 

Middletown,  May  15,  ipo6. 
My  Dear  Sir: 

The  Committee  on  Entertainment  desires  to  make  as  satisfac- 
tory arrangements  as  possible  for  the  accommodation  of  Com- 
mencement visitors.  This  can  he  done  only  in  so  far  as  the  alumni 
cooperate  by  promptly  sending  information  as  to  their  intentions. 
Inasmuch  as,  since  the  burning  of  North  College,  many  students 
have  taken  rooms  in  private  houses,  it  will  be  for  the  advantage 
of  those  wishing  the  most  desirable  accommodations  to  apply  as 
soon  as  possible. 

Will  you  kindly  aid  the  Committee  by  signifying  on  the  enclosed 
card  whether  or  not  you  intend  to  be  present  at  the  seventy-fifth 
anniversary  exercises?  If  you  have  already  arranged  for  accom- 
modations, please  give  the  location  of  your  room,  as  the  cards 
when  returned  are  to  he  filed  and  used  as  a  directory. 

A  small  number  of  rooms  will  be  available  in  the  hotels  of  the 
city.  For  those  who  may  apply,  the  Committee  can  secure  a 
limited  number  of  rooms  in  private  houses.  The  rent  of  rooms 
accommodating  two  persons  will  average  about  $2.00  a  day. 
Assignments  to  rooms  will  be  made  in  the  order  of  application. 
It  is  important,  therefore,  that  applications  should  be  made  at  an 
early  date,  and  it  is  suggested  that,  as  far  as  possible,  two  persons 
arrange  to  occupy  a  room  together.  It  is  requested  that  those 
who  secure  rooms  through  the  Committee  will  settle  directly  with 
the  persons  from  whom  they  are  rented,  as  the  Committee  cannot 
undertake  any  financial  responsibility  in  the  matter. 

The  eating  clubs  of  the  seven  college  fraternities  will  supply 
meals  at  reasonable  rates  to  their  own  alumni.  The  College  Com- 
mons will  furnish  meals  to  visitors  as  far  as  accommodations 
permit.  Meals  will  be  supplied  at  Webb  Hall  to  women  grad- 
uates and  their  friends.  The  rates  charged  at  the  College 
Commons  and  at  Webb  Hall  will  be  $1.00  a  day.  The  hotels  and 
restaurants  and  a  few  private  families  will  also  furnish  board  at 
rates  varying  from  $1.00  to  $1.50  a  day.     In  filling  out  the 


138 


APPENDIX 


enclosed  card  please  indicate  the  place  zvhere  you  wish  to  take 
your  meals. 

At  your  earliest  convenience  after  your  arrival  in  Middletown 
you  are  requested  to  register  at  the  Library,  zvhere  the  Committee 
will  establish  a  Bureau  of  Information. 

The  Commencement  Luncheon  will  be  open  this  year  to  alumni 
and  to  officially  invited  guests  only,  each  alumnus  being  entitled 
to  one  ticket.  The  accommodations  are  limited  and  tickets  zvill  be 
assigned  in  order  of  application.  Order  a  ticket  now  by  means  of 
the  enclosed  card  and  it  will  be  reserved  for  you  until  p  A.  M., 
Tuesday,  June  26.  After  that  hour  it  will  be  subject  to  reassign- 
ment.   Tickets  must  be  called  for  in  person  at  the  Library. 

Your  especial  attention  is  called  to  the  enclosed  program  of 
exercises  and  the  circular  concerning  railroad  rates. 

Fill  out  the  enclosed  postal  card  in  full  and  mail  it  now. 

K.  P.  Harrington, 
W.  J.  James. 


[Private  Mailing  Card  sent  with  above  Circular !\ 

I  do expect  to  be  present  during  Cofnntencement  week,  2906, 

reaching  Middletown  on  June. ,  and  remaining  for. days.   1 

shall  be  accompanied  by 

Please  reserve .room      for  me  and  secure  board  for  me  at 

[/  have  already  secured  a  room  at 

Street. "l    Please  do reserve  a  luncheon 

ticket  for  me  until  9  a.m,.,  Tuesday,  June  26. 

Name, Class, 

Address, 

The  Commitiet  will  endeavor  to  secure  rooms  and  board  but  cannot  guarantee  either. 


APPENDIX  139 

[Marshal's  Notice.l 
WESLEYAN    UNIVERSITY 


SEVENTY-FIFTH    ANNIVERSARY 


MARSHAL'S  NOTICE 

Sunday,  June  24,  Baccalaureate  Service. 
The  Faculty  (present  and  former  members),  with  the  Gradu- 
ating Class,  will  meet  in  the  Chapel  of  the  Methodist  Church  at 
10  A.  M.,  and  pass  thence  in  procession  into  the  church. 

Wednesday,  June  2^,  Commencement. 

1.  If  the  weather  permit,  the  Commencement  procession  will 
form  at  Fisk  Hall.  For  this  purpose  the  Trustees,  Faculty  (pres- 
ent and  former  members),  Members  of  the  Faculties  of  Other 
Institutions,  Specially  Invited  Guests,  Candidates  for  Honorary 
Degrees,  the  Men  of  the  Graduating  Class,  and,  in  addition,  all 
Alumni  will  meet  at  9.30  A.  M.  in  the  following  rooms,  viz. : 

The  Trustees,  Faculty,  Invited  Guests,  and  Candi- 
dates FOR  Honorary  Degrees,  in  C,  Fisk  Hall 
(basement). 

The  Alumni  in  A,  Fisk  Hall  (basement). 

The  Men  of  the  Graduating  Class  in  B,  Fisk  Hall 
(basement). 

The  Alumnae  of  Wesleyan  University,  and  the  Women  of  the 
Graduating  Class,  will  join  the  procession  at  the  Middlesex,  meet- 
ing there  for  this  purpose  not  later  than  10  o'clock  in  rooms  3  and 
5  on  the  ground  floor. 

2.  In  Case  of  Rain  the  procession  will  be  formed  at  the 
Middlesex.  The  signal  announcing  this  change  of  plan  will  be 
the  tolling  of  the  College  bell  at  9.30  A.  M.  In  this  case,  those 
who  would  otherwise  form  in  procession  at  Fisk  Hall  will  assem- 
ble, not  later  than  10  o'clock,  at  the  Middlesex,  the  Trustees, 
Faculty,  Invited  Guests,  and  Candidates  for  Honorary  Degrees 


I40  APPENDIX 

meeting  in  Orpheus  Hall,  and  the  Alumni  and  the  Men  of  the 
Graduating  Class  in  Society  Hall,  on  the  third  floor  of  the  Middle- 
sex building.    Women  will  meet  as  indicated  under  i. 

Academic  costume  will  be  worn  at  Commencement  by  the 
Faculty  and  all  Candidates  for  Degrees.  For  others  it  will  be 
appropriate,  but  not  requisite. 


(§xitt  nf  (Hammtntttmnt  l^xnttBBmn 

Graduating  Class. 

Alumnae. 

Alumni^   Classes    1871-1905,    in   order   of   graduation.   Older 

Classes  leading. 
Alumni,  Classes  1838-1870,  in  order  of  graduation,  Younger 

Classes  leading. 
Faculty    of    Wesleyan    University     (present    and    former 

members). 
Members  of  the  Faculties  of  Other  Institutions. 
Trustees  of  Wesleyan  University. 
Specially   Invited   Guests   and   Candidates   for   Honorary 

Degrees. 
Speakers  of  the  day. 
President  of  Wesleyan  University. 


LIST   OF   VISITORS 


APPENDIX  143 


Reverend  Charles  LeRoy  Goodell, 

Pastor  of  Calvary  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  New  York, 
N.  Y. 
Reverend  William  Douglas  Mackenzie, 

President    of    Hartford    Theological    Seminary,    Hartford, 
Conn. 
Professor  Henry  Clay  Sheldon_, 

Boston  University  School  of  Theology,  Boston,  Mass. 
Professor  Charles  Macaulay  Stuart, 

Garrett  Biblical  Institute,  Evanston,  111. 


APPENDIX 


145 


Almmtl 


[This  list  includes  non-graduates,  their  names  being  printed 
withaif.] 


1841 

George  G.  Reynolds. 

1846 

Francis  T.  Garrettson. 

1847 

Edward  G.  Andrews. 
Joseph  E.  King. 
Silas  W.  Robbins. 

1860 

John  M.  VanVleck. 

1852 

Thompson  H.  Landon. 

1864 

Calvin  B.  Ford. 
Cyrus  D.  Foss. 

1857 

William  T.  Elmer. 

1858 

Henry  A.  Collin. 
Daniel  C.  Knowles. 
JCharles  H.  Stocking. 

1869 

C.  Collard  Adams. 
Stephen  B.  Davis. 
Watson  C.  Squire. 
10 


1860 

JJames  M.  Buckley. 
Webster  R.  Walkley. 

1861 

William  D.  Bridge. 
Roswell  S.  Douglass. 
Daniel  W.  Raymond. 
Charles  G.  R.  Vinal. 
Nathan  W.  Wilder. 

1863 

William  P.  Hubbard. 

1864 

Henry  Baker. 
George  S.  Bennett. 
Charles  H.  Buck. 
Charles  W.  Church. 
Henry  C.  M.  Ingraham. 
George  N.  Phelps. 
George  L.  Thompson. 

1866 

George  A.  Graves. 
William  V.  Kelley. 
$  Jonathan  B.  Kilbourn. 
Joseph  O.  Munson. 
William  North  Rice. 
Eli  AS  B.  Sanford. 

1866 

JLovELL  Hall. 


146 


APPENDIX 


Warren  L.  Hoagland. 
Stephen  H.  Olin. 
George  C.  Round. 
Alexander  H.  Tuttle. 
Granville  Yager. 

1867 

Edward  Cunningham. 

1868 

Martin  A.  Knapp. 
Albert  J.  Nast. 
D.  Ward  Northrop. 
Joseph  E.  Robins. 

1869 

Alfred  Noon. 
Henry  A.  Starks. 
Caleb  T.  Winchester. 

1870 

Darius  Baker. 
Isaac  N.  Clements. 
Benjamin  Gill. 
William  A.  Johnston. 
William  H.  Peters. 
William  J.  Smith. 

1871 

Eldon  B.  Birdsey. 
Watson  T.  Dunmore. 
Theodore  E.  Hancock. 
William  F.  Whitcher. 

1872 

John  A.  Cass. 
^Leveret  M.  Hubbard. 
JMartin  V.  B.  Knox. 

F.  Mason  North. 

Charles  F.  Rice. 
JLyman  E.  Rockwell. 


1873 

Everett  O.  Fisk. 
Benjamin  E.  Gerst. 
Delmar  R.  Lowell. 
Alfred  C.  True. 

1874 

Forrest  E.  Barker. 
$James  H.  Boucher. 
^Robert  A.  Carrington. 

Morris  B.  Crawford. 

Daniel  Dorchester,  Jr. 

A.  Emerson  Palmer. 

Francis  H.  Parker. 

Wesley  U.  Pearne. 

John  C.  Welwood. 

1876 

Leonard  L.  Beeman. 
M.  Eugene  Culver. 

1876 

Aldon  O.  Abbott. 

WiLBERT  C.  BlAKEMAN. 

Augustus  B.  Carrington. 
George  S.  Coleman. 
Charles  E.  Davis. 
J.  Frank  Haley. 
Frank  R.  Sherwood. 
Phebe  a.  (Stone)  Beeman. 

1877 

J.  Francis  Calef. 
Henry  P.  Cooke. 
William  I.  Haven. 
Thomas  C.  Martin. 

1878 

Clarence  E.  Bacon. 
John  S.  Camp. 
William  D.  Leonard. 


APPENDIX 


147 


Daniel  L.  Robertson. 
William  E.  Scofield. 

1879 

Lahman  F.  Bower. 
Alfred  C.  Bruner. 
Nelson  Edwards. 
John  Galbraith. 
Henry  Gildersleeve^  Jr. 
Wilbur  F.  Hamilton. 
Albert  Mann. 
Daniel  A.  Markham. 
Caroline  L.  (Rice)  Craw- 
ford. 

1880 

Andrew  J.  Coultas,  Jr. 
Martin  W.  Griffin. 
Abram  W.  Harris. 
George  E.  Metcalf. 
Asa  H.  Wilcox. 

1881 

Thomas  H.  Eckfeldt. 

Charles  L.  Foster. 

Frederic  A.  Jackson. 

William  A.  Jones. 

Benjamin  F.  Kidder. 

Charles  W.  McCormick. 

William  E.  Mead. 

William  R.  Newhall. 
ifRoBERT  F.  Raymond. 
JWanton  H.  Sherman,  Jr. 

Samuel  D.  Sherwood. 

Willis  K.  Stetson. 

$WlLLIAM    WiLLCOCKS. 

Clara  Van  Vleck. 

1882 
Joseph  F.  deCastro. 
Brace  M.  Gallien. 


Frank  K.  Hallock. 
Karl  P.  Harrington. 
Charles  Reynolds. 
$Clara  a.  Pease. 

1883 

JAaron  V.  Bower. 

J.  Francis  Cooper. 

Elmer  G.  Derby. 

William  J.  James. 
JJosEPH  A.  Richards. 

Thomas  Simms. 

1884 

Joseph  B.  Ackley. 

David  G.  Downey. 
JJoHN  H.  DuLany. 

George  M.  LaMonte. 

William  A.  Richard. 

William  A.  Tateum. 

Arthur  Titcomb. 

Ella  V.  Burr. 
$Emelda  (MacMillan) 
Richard. 

1885 

Edward  D.  Bassett. 

Frank  D.  Beattys. 

George  D.  Beattys. 
^Frederick  W.  Clark. 

Saul  O.  Curtice. 

James  F.  Fellows. 
JAbram  S.  Kavanagh. 

Oscar  Kuhns. 

William  H.  Mitchell. 

Arthur  E.  Sutherland. 

DeWitt  B.  Thompson. 

1886 
Edward  L.  Blaine. 
George  C.  Boswell. 


148 


APPENDIX 


Frank  R.  Bouton. 
Walter  P.  Buck. 
Clinton  D.  Burdick. 
Arthur  W.  Byrt. 
Henry  F.  Clark. 
John  C.  Clark. 
William  B.  Gwinnell. 
Charles  W.  Lyon,  Jr. 

WiNFIELD  S.  MaNSHIP. 

John  A.  Morse. 
John  C.  Packard. 
Edward  B.  Rosa. 
Charles  Scott,  Jr. 
Charles  H.  Stackpole. 
Cyrus  J.  Strong. 
Edward  C.  Strout. 
Bertha  Bass. 

1887 

Edwin  Fish. 
JLyman  G.  Horton. 

Herbert  Welch. 
JRalph  M.  Wilcox. 

1888 
Frederick  G.  Axtell. 
Harry  H.  Beattys. 
William  E.  Bruner. 
William  M.  Cassidy. 
Henry  P.  Griffin. 
Frederick  H.  L.  Hammond. 
Harry  K.  Munroe. 
Theodore  Richards. 
W.  Barnard  Smith. 
Aaron  L.  Treadwell. 
Thomas  D.  Wells. 
Marcus  White. 
Alice  M.  Hotchkiss. 

1889 

Edward  E.  Abercrombie. 
Seward  V.  Coffin. 


Frederick  M.  Davenport. 
William  B.  Eaton. 
George  W.  Gardiner,  Jr. 
Seymour  Landon. 
John  E.  Loveland. 
Rowland  Miles. 
JCharles  W.  Stiles. 
Charles  P.  Tinker. 
NoRTHAM  Wright. 

1890 

Francis  A.  Bagnall. 
Charles  E.  Barto. 
Robert  J.  Beach. 
Edgar  S.  Fernald. 
John  M.  Harris. 
Anna  H.  Andrews. 
LiLLiE  B.  (Conn)  Kuhns. 
JNettie  L.  Whitney. 

1891 

Waters  B.  Day. 
Ralph  B.  Hibbard. 
John  E.  Jenkins. 
Linnaeus  E.  La  Fetra. 
LuDwiG  A.  Lange. 
John  G.  Mitchell. 
Eugene  A.  Noble. 
George  L.  Plimpton. 
George  H.  Rogers. 
Arthur  W.  Smith. 
Harry  M.  Smith. 
JCharles  B.  Young. 
Ellen  M.  B.  Peck. 

1892 

JCharles  D.  Burnes. 
David  J.  Carlough. 
Albert  L.  Crowell. 
Frank  A.   Galloway. 
George  S.  Godard. 


APPENDIX 


149 


Howard  D.  Gordon. 
Ralph  M.  Grant. 
William  H.  Hall. 
Nelson  C.  Hubbard. 
William  H.  Kidd. 
William  F.  Little. 
Arthur  B.  Miller. 
Clifford  I.  Parshley. 
$  James  S.  Parshley. 
John  S.  Pullman. 
Alfred  E.  Taylor. 
Lena  M.  (Adams)  Rand. 

1893 

Winfred  C.  Akers. 
JLeland  M.  Burr. 
William  E.  Fairbank. 
Charles  G.  Goodrich. 
Wesley  E.  Lake. 
Martin  O.  Lepley. 
G.  Rowland  Munroe. 
Robert  C.  Parker. 
Edwin  O.  Smith. 

1894 

J.  Gordon  Baldwin. 
William  B.  Davis. 
William  M.  Esten. 
Fredric  W.  Frost. 
Lewis  E.  Gordon. 
William  F.  Groves. 
JFrank  M.  Horr. 
Charles  H.  Judd. 
Irving  A.  Meeker. 
Frederick  H.  Sawyer. 
John  A.  Thompson. 
Henry  A.  Tirrell. 
Edwin  C.  Treat. 
Lizzie  C.  (Rice)  Barnes. 

1895 

Samuel  LeR.  Ackerly. 
James  L.  Bahret. 


Edward  F.  Coffin. 
James  P.  Erskine. 
Henry  I.  Harriman. 
Franklin  T.  Kurt. 
Warren  R.  Neff. 
Arthur  C.  Pomeroy. 
^Robert  N.  Smith. 
Howard  A.  Sutton. 
Claude  L.  Wilson. 

1896 

Francis  C.  Brown. 

Henry  L.  Clements. 

James  B.  Comins. 

Melrose  D.  Davies. 
JCharles  W.  Hale. 
$  Walter  T.  Lindsay. 

Irving  E.  Manchester. 

Thomas  B.  Miller. 

George  M.  Moody. 
^Frederick  L.  Parker. 

James  Pullman. 

Henry  D.  Trinkaus. 

Isabella  J.  Church. 

Edith  R.  (Graves)  Harriman. 

Mary  A.  McKay. 

Frances  B.    (Petty)    Man- 
ship. 

Margaret    N.     (Williams) 
Belden. 

1897 

Manning  B.  Bennett. 
R.  Nelson  Bennett. 
N.  Evan  Davis. 
William  G.  Giffin. 
Whitney  M.  Hubbard. 
Alvenza  I.  Smith. 
Minnie  R.  Snow. 
Cornelia  H.  Stone. 
Mary  L.  Westgate. 


ISO 


APPENDIX 


Elizabeth  (Williams) 

Tower. 
Elizabeth  C.  Wright. 
Carrie  M.  Yale. 

1898 

Fred  I.  Brown. 

J.  Howard  Fairchild. 

Harold  Hastings. 

Eben  Jackson. 

Robert  T.  Jones. 

Robert  D.  Milner. 

Edward  L.  Montgomery. 

Adolphus  S.  North. 

Samuel  Quickmire. 

George  D.  Robins. 

Ralph  D.  Whiting. 

Archer  E.  Young. 

Mary  (Northrop)  Burdick. 

ZuLA  E.  Rogers. 

Isabel  M.  Walbridge. 

1899 

Marcellus  C.  Avery. 
Arthur  H.  Burdick. 
Robert  E.  Harned. 
Perry  C.  Hill. 
Albert  E.  Legg. 
William  H.  Leslie. 
William  E.  Parker. 
Ward  W.  Packard. 
Ernest  M.  Quittmeyer. 
Charles  H.  Raymond. 
Alfred  E.  Roberts. 
JBuRTON  C.  Rogers. 
Warren  F.  Sheldon. 
Newton  G.  Wright. 
Oliver  E.  Yale. 
Florence  E.  (BARit\CLOUGH) 

Quickmire. 
Adella  W.  Bates. 
Julia  Brazos. 


1900 

JCurtiss  S.  Bacon. 
Harry  T.  Baker. 
Horace  D.  Byrnes. 
Charles  H.  Davis. 
H.  Loranus  Davis. 
LeRoy  a.  Howland. 
Charles  E.  Johnston. 
Edward  McMillen. 
Ralph  W.  Rymer. 
Isaac  C.  Sutton. 

WiNTHROP  TiRRELL. 

Payson  J.  Treat. 
Emory  H.  Westlake. 
Annie  G.  (Birdsey)  Steele. 
Dora  I.   (Blackman) 

McMillen. 
Alice  Brigham. 

1901 

William  E.  Adams. 

Walter  M.  Anderson. 

George  E.  Bishop. 

Burton  H.  Camp. 

Albert  L.  Cooper. 

John  A.  Decker,  Jr. 

Harriman  C.  Dodd. 
^Archibald  St.  J.  Downey. 

Roy  H.  Jones. 
JHarry  C.  Lane. 

Lester  E.  Lynde. 

Arthur  J.  Meredith. 

Robert  J.  Merriam. 

W.  Percival  Ogden. 

Dudley  B.  Palmer. 

Walter  J.  Randolph. 

Walter  R.  Terry. 

Susan  M.  Adams. 

Mabelle  W.  Barnes. 

Annie  S.  Brown. 

Marie  R.  Hubert. 


APPENDIX 


151 


Edith  L.  Risley. 
J.  Myra  Wilcox. 

1902 

Robert  A.  Anderson. 
Burton  J.  Baldwin. 
John  M.  Betts. 
Marshall  Bevin. 
W.  Harry  Clemons. 
JLouis  Denniston.  ' 
Alexander  J.  Inglis. 
Michael  G.  Lawton, 
Ernest  M.  Libby. 
Frederick  M.  McGaw. 
Thomas  H.  Montgomery. 
James  W.  Mudge. 
Carl  S.  Neumann. 
Robert  B.  Newell. 
Clarence  L.  Newton. 
WiLBER  E.  Newton. 
Harrie  a.  Pratt. 
Carl  F.  Price. 
George  D.  Ryder. 
Hubert  N.  Terrell. 
Everett  L.  Thorndike. 
Alice  L.  Adams. 
Eldora  J.  Birch. 
Alice  W.  English. 
Mabelle  C.  ( Grant)  Meeker. 
Jessie  M.  (Winans)  Betts. 

1903 

Arlon  T.  Adams. 
Irving  M.  Anderson. 
James  G.  Bagg. 
James  H.  Baker. 
Robert  A.  Bartlett. 
Z.  Platt  Bennett. 
James  G.  Berrien. 
Walter  G.  Brown. 
Otto  A.  Bushnell. 


William  P.  Calder. 
JPaul  F.  Canfield. 
JFred  E.  Clerk. 

Clarence  F.  Corner. 

Howard  D.  Crane. 

Milton  W.  Davenport. 

Harry  P.  Day. 

RiDGWAY  B.  Espy. 
$Clifton  F.  Gardner. 

Perry  S.  Howe. 

Max  F.  Howland. 

William  S.  Jackson. 

John  W.  Langdale. 

Ralph  C.  Lathrop. 

Floyd  S.  Leach. 

Harry  W.  Little. 

George  H.  McGaw. 

William  E.  H.  Mathison. 
$James  I.  Merritt. 

Ralph  Norton. 

Jesse  L.  Parker. 

Fletcher  H.  Parsons. 

Wallace  L.  Root. 

Herbert  B.  Shonk. 

Harry  H.  Smith. 

James  R.  Veitch. 

George  M.  Warner. 

Myron  J.  Willson. 

Mary  E.  Bagg. 

Zelia  a.  Cutler. 
$Rena  C.  (Gladding)  Pratt. 

Minnie  C.  Rigby. 

1904 

Roland  J.  Bunten. 
Myron  C.  Cramer. 
Louis  D.  Day. 
Gerald  B.  Demarest. 
Frank  P.  Fletcher. 
Frank  N.  Freeman. 
Asa  R.  Gifford. 


152 


APPENDIX 


Kenneth  M.  Goode. 

Arthur  S.  Grant. 

Clifford  W.  Hall. 

Samuel  F.  Holmes. 

Merritt  J.  Hopkins. 

Roy  S.  Hurd. 

Ralph  W.  Keeler. 

Edgar  MacNaughten. 
JCharles  H.  Northam. 

Howard  S.  Packard. 
^Frederick  L.  Phelps. 

Samuel  T.  Reynolds. 

Howard  M.  Richard. 

Moses  S.  Rogers. 

Stetson  K.  Ryan. 

Henry  G.  Shailer. 

Warren  S.  Wallace. 

Henry  A.  White. 

David  D.  Whitney. 

James  E.  Wilson. 

Harold  E.  Wilson. 

Helen  L.  Gilbert. 

Ethel  G.  Reynolds. 

Marguerite   M.    Van   Ben- 

SCHOTEN. 

1905 

Hanford  C.  Adams. 
John  F.  Boyd. 


Minn  S.  Cornell. 
John  B.  Eyster. 
Allan  Ferguson. 
Howard  B.  Field. 
Harry  N.  French. 
Stewart  F.  Hancock. 
William  M.  Heisler. 
Henry  A.  Holmes. 
Howard  E.  A.  Jones. 
Martin  H.  Knapp. 
Ralph  W.  Leighton. 
Ralph  E.  Martin. 
Ralph  H.  Mix. 
Julian  C.  Morgan. 
Victor  C.  Myers. 
George  B.  Neumann. 
Hermon  F.  Onthrup. 
John  A.  Randall. 
George  G.  Reynolds,  2nd. 
Horace  J.  Rice. 
Robert  H.  Rippere. 
Charles  A.  Russell. 
JHoYT  P.  Simmons. 
Clarence  H.  Tryon. 
Howard  L.  Winslow. 
James  M.  Yard. 
Ruth  B.  Bonfoey. 
Ruth  Dean. 
Maude  S.  Newell. 


Alumni,  not  Bachelors  of  Wesleyan  University. 

Nelson  Simmons  Cobleigh  (M.A.,  1866). 
Owen  Vincent  Coffin  (LL.D.,  1895). 
Alice  Baker  Guy  (M.S.,  1902). 


TRUSTEES    AND    FACULTY    OF 

WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY 

June,    1906 


[Those  marked  with  a  t  were  present  during  the  Celebration.] 

i  Henry  Cruise  Murphy  Ingraham,  LL.D.,  Pres., 
Brooklyn,  N.  Y. 

J  Rev.  David  George  Downey,  D.D.,  Secretary, 
Brooklyn,  N.  Y. 

J  Rev.  Charles  Henry  Buck,  D.D.,  Treasurer, 
Yonkers,  N.  Y. 

J  Pres.  Bradford  Paul  Raymond,  D.D.,  LL.D., 
(Member  ex  officio),  Middletown. 

term  expires  in  1906 
$  Hon.  David  Ward  Northrop,  M.A., 
Middletown. 

f  Cephas  Brainerd  Rogers, 
Meriden. 

John  Emory  Andrus,  B.A., 
Yonkers,  N.  Y. 

Henry  Hobart  Benedict, 
New  Haven. 

Charles  Gibson, 
Albany,  N.  Y. 

$  §  Hon.  George  Greenwood  Reynolds,  LL.D., 

Brooklyn,  N.  Y. 
t  §  Rev.  Pres.  Herbert  Welch,  D.D.,  LL.D., 

Delaware,  O. 

fRev.  James  Marcus  King,  D.D.,  LL.D., 
Philadelphia,  Pa. 


156  APPENDIX 

t  Rev.  Edmund  Mead  Mills,  Ph.D.,  D.D., 
Penn  Yan,  N.  Y. 

TERM  EXPIRES  IN   IQO/ 

X  Rev.  James  Monroe  Buckley^  D.D.,  LL.D., 
New  York,  N.  Y. 

Frank  Smith  Jones, 
Brooklyn,  N.  Y. 

X  Henry  Cruise  Murphy  Ingraham,  LL.D., 
Brooklyn,  N.  Y. 

James  Noel  Brown, 
New  York,  N.  Y. 

$  Samuel  Wood  Bowne, 
New  York,  N.  Y. 

X  Hon.  Wesley  Ulysses  Pearne,  B.A., 
Middletown. 

J  §  Hon.  Darius  Baker,  LL.D., 
Newport,  R.  L 

|§Rev.  David  George  Downey,  D.D., 
Brooklyn,  N.  Y. 

fRev.  John  Wesley  Lindsay,  D.D., 
West  Newton,  Mass. 

t  William  Perry  Billings, 
Kingston,   Pa. 
X  t  Rev.  Warren  Lanning  Hoagland,  D.D., 
East  Orange,  N.  J. 

term  expires  in  1908 
Hon.  William  Connell, 
Scranton,  Pa. 
$  George  Slocum  Bennett,  M.A., 
Wilkes-Barre,  Pa. 


APPENDIX  157 

Charles  Lee  Rockwell, 
Meriden. 

Rev.  AzEL  Washburn  Hazen,  D.D., 
Middletown. 

X  William  Edwin  Sessions, 
Bristol. 

John  Thomas  Porter, 
Scranton,  Pa. 

J  §  Hon.  Martin  Augustine  Knapp,  LL.D., 
Washington,  D.  C. 
i  §  Abram  Winegardner  Harris,  Sc.D.,  LL.D., 
Port  Deposit,  Md. 
fRev.  Albert  Pearne  Palmer,  M.A., 
Lowville,  N.  Y. 

term  expires  in  1909 
JRev.  Charles  Henry  Buck,  D.D., 
Yonkers,  N.  Y. 
Hon.  Phineas  Chapman  Lounsbury,  LL.D., 
New  York,  N.  Y. 
X  George  Silas  Coleman,  M.A., 

New  York,  N.  Y. 
J  John  Edgar  Leaycraft, 
New  York,  N.  Y. 
Cyrus  Daniel  Jones, 
Scranton,  Pa. 

$  §  Webster  Rogers  Walkley,  M.A., 
New  York,  N.  Y. 
§  Frederic  Wilcox  Clarke,  B.S., 
Boston,  Mass. 
X  t  Rev.  Daniel  Clark  Knowles,  D.D., 
Tilton,  N.  H. 


158  APPENDIX 

$  t  Rev.  Frank  Mason  North,  D.D., 
New  York,  N..  Y. 

yRev.  Isaac  Harrison  Whittier  Wharff,  D.D., 
Bangor,  Me. 

fRev.  Wilbur  Fisk  Holmes,  M.A., 
Kennebunk,  Me. 

TERM  EXPIRES  IN   I9IO 

t  Rev.  Bp.  Cyrus  David  Foss,  D.D.,  LL.D., 
Philadelphia,  Pa. 

f  Rev.  Bp.  Edward  Gayer  Andrews,  D.D.,  LL.D., 
Brooklyn,  N.  Y. 

J  Rev.  Joseph  Elijah  King,  Ph.D.,  D.D., 
Fort  Edward,  N.  Y. 

J  Rev.  William  Valentine  Kelley,  D.D., 
New  York,  N.  Y. 

$  Hon.  Watson  Carvosso  Squire,  B.A., 
Seattle,  Wash. 

J  Albert  Randolph  Crittenden, 
Middletown. 
John  Gribbell, 

Philadelphia,  Pa. 
James  Gardner  Shepherd, 
Scranton,   Pa. 
X  §  Stephen  Henry  Olin,  LL.D., 

New  York,  N.  Y. 
t§  Charles  Scott,  M.A., 
Overbrook,  Pa. 
1 1  Rev.  Andrew  Jackson  Coultas,  Jr.,  D.D., 
Providence,  R.  I. 
fRev.  William  John  Chapman,  M.A., 
Crown  Point,  N.  Y. 


APPENDIX  159 

TERM    BEGINS   IN    I906 

X  Hon.  David  Ward  Northrop,  M.A., 
Middletown. 

$  Cephas  Brainerd  Rogers, 
Meriden. 

John  Emory  Andrus,  B.A., 
Yonkers,  N.  Y. 

Henry  Hobart  Benedict, 
New  Haven. 

Charles  Gibson, 
Albany,  N.  Y. 

J  §  Hon.  George  Greenwood  Reynolds,  LL.D., 
Brooklyn,  N.  Y. 

$  §  George  Davis  Beattys,  M.A., 

New  York,  N.  Y. 

^R&w.  Edmund  Mead  Mills,  Ph.D.,  D.D., 
Penn  Yan,  N.  Y. 

Note. — Trustees  whose  names  are  marked  with  a  §  were  elected  by  the 
alumni ;  those  whose  names  are  marked  with  a  t  were  elected  by  the  pat- 
ronizing conferences ;   all  others  were  elected  by  the  Board  of  Trustees. 

The  term  of  office  is  five  years,  the  official  year  beginning  on  the  Mon- 
day preceding  the  annual  Commencement. 


i6o  APPENDIX 


Rev.  BRADFORD  PAUL  RAYMOND,  D.D.,  LL.D., 

President, 

And  A.  V.  Stout  Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy. 

JOHN  MONROE  VAN  VLECK,  LL.D., 
Fisk  Professor  of  Mathematics  and  Astronomy,  Emeritus. 

Rev.  WILLIAM  NORTH  RICE,  Ph.D.,  LL.D., 
G.  I.  Seney  Professor  of  Geology, 

WILBUR  OLIN  ATWATER,   Ph.D., 
Beach  Professor  of  Chemistry. 

CALEB  THOMAS  WINCHESTER,  L.H.D., 
Olin  Professor  of  English  Literature. 

MORRIS  BARKER  CRAWFORD,  M.A., 
Foss  Professor  of  Physics. 

HERBERT  WILLIAM  CONN,  Ph.D., 
Daniel  Ayres  Professor  of  Biology. 

ANDREW  CAMPBELL  ARMSTRONG,  Ph.D., 
WiUiam  Griffin  Professor  of  Philosophy. 

WILLIAM  EDWARD  MEAD,  Ph.D., 
Waite  Professor  of  the  English  Language. 

KARL  POMEROY  HARRINGTON,  M.A., 
Robert  Rich  Professor  of  the  Latin  Language  and  Literature. 

WILLIAM  JOHN  JAMES,  M.A., 
Librarian. 

FRANK  WALTER  NICOLSON,  M.A., 
Secretary  of  the  Faculty,  and  Associate  Professor  of  Latin. 

WALTER  PARKE  BRADLEY,  Ph.D., 
Professor  of  Chemistry. 


I 


/     ^      O      i  Hi 

if  UNIVERSITY 

OF 


APPENDIX  l6i 

fEDWARD  BURR  VAN  VLECK,  Ph.D., 
Professor  of  Mathematics. 

OSCAR   KUHNS,   L.H.D., 
Hollis  Professor  of  Romance  Languages. 

****** 
Charlotte  Augusta  Ayres  Professor  of  Physics. 

WILLARD  CLARK  FISHER,  B.A., 
Professor  of  Economics  and  Social  Science. 

WILLIAM  ARTHUR  HEIDEL,  Ph.D., 
Jane  A.  Seney  Professor  of  the  Greek  Language  and  Literature. 

FRANCIS  GANO  BENEDICT,  Ph.D., 
Professor  of  Chemistry. 

RAYMOND  DODGE,  Ph.D^, 
Professor  of  Psychology. 

WALTER  GUYTON  CADY,  Ph.D., 
Associate  Professor  of  Physics. 

ROBERT  HERNDON  FIFE,  Jr.,  Ph.D., 
Marcus  L.  Taft  Professor  of  the  German  Language  and  Literature. 

RALPH  CLEWELL  SUPER,  M.A., 
Instructor  in  Modern  Languages. 

ROBERT  ALLYN  BUDINGTON,  M.A., 
Instructor  in  Biology. 

ROSWELL  POWELL  STEPHENS,  Ph.D., 
Instructor  in  Mathematics. 

GEORGE  MATTHEW  DUTCHER,  Ph.D., 
Hedding  Professor  of  History. 

JOSEPH  WILLIAM  HEWITT,  Ph.D., 

Associate  Professor  of  Latin  and  Greek. 

LEROY  ALBERT  HOWLAND,  M.A., 
Instructor  in  Mathematics, 
t  Absent  for  the  year. 
II 


i62  APPENDIX 

SAMUEL  WARD  LOPER,  M.A., 

Curator  of  the  Museum. 

WILLIAM  MERRILL  ESTEN,  M.S., 
Assistant  in  Biology. 

HOWARD  ROLAxNFD  REITER,  B.A., 

Director  of  the  Gymnasium. 

CLARENCE  FREDERIC  HALE,  B.S., 

Assistant  in  Chemistry. 

SAMUEL  FOSS  HOLMES,  Ph.B., 
Assistant  in  English. 

ERWIN   STANLEY  FULTON,  B.S., 
Assistant  in  Chemistry. 

MARTIN  STUART  HALL,  B.A., 

Assistant  in  Physics. 

ADRIENNE  VAN  WINKLE, 
Assistant  Librarian. 


JULIA  BRAZOS,  Ph.B., 
Dean  of  Women. 


DEGREES    CONFERRED   BY 

WESLEYAN  UNIVERSITY 

June    27,   1906 


The  following  degrees  were  conferred  in  course: 

The  Degree  of  Bachelor  of  Science  on: 

Raymond  Wolcott  Bristol. 
Ralph  Martin  Cole. 
Henry  Gonsalves. 
William  Henry  Long. 
Laurence  Free  McDonald. 
Harold  Clifton  Martin. 
Arthur  James  Monroe. 
Oliver  Taylor  Noon. 
Charles  Frank  Phipps. 
Joshua  Lester  Robins. 
Ferdinand  Richard  Streber. 
Clifford  Le  Grande  Waite. 
Ernest  Burr  Wheeler. 

Daisy  Helena  Lohr. 

The  Degree  of  Bachelor  of  Philosophy  on: 

Harold  DeForest  Arnold. 
Charles  Woodard  Atwater. 
Wilbur  Stone  Beeman. 
George  Imlay  Bodine,  Jr. 
Arthur  Kent  Dearborn. 
Ward  Percy  Gammons. 
Gordon  Gray  Gatch. 
Robert  Gray  Goodman. 
George  Henry  Hamilton. 
Ira  Prouty  Ingraham. 
William  Armour  Johnston,  Jr. 
Arthur  Elliott  Paterson. 
Dwight  Milton  Sawyer. 
Lester  Reuben  Weeks. 
James  Augustus  Wilson. 


1 66  APPENDIX 


Alice  Gertrude  Cooke. 
Helen  Katherine  Fletcher. 
Jessie  Louise  Keene. 
Katherine  Frances  Lucey. 
Edith  Weekes  Say. 
Anna  Madeline  Vanderbrouk. 
Elizabeth  Matilda  Veazey. 
Ella  Pardee  Warner. 
Florence  Winter. 

The  Degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts  on: 
Arthur  Ray  Anderson. 
William  Ebenezer  Bell. 
Earl  Maltby  Benson. 
Samuel  Curtis  Campaigne. 
Theron  Alvord  Clements. 
Jesse  Vancleft  Cooper. 
Lester  Francis  Deming. 
Clarence  Eugene  Hancock. 
Warren  Lucius  Harlow. 
George  Edwin  Heath. 
Benjamin  Murley  Johns. 
Albert  Mann,  Jr. 
Ellis  Hoagland  Martin. 
William  Gordon  Murphy,  Jr. 
Newton  Manley  Perrins. 
William  Northcote  Phillips. 
Henry  Boardman  Powell,  Jr. 
Frank  Egleston  Robbins. 
Guy  Wright  Rogers. 
Jesse  Ernest  Shaw. 
George  Wiley  Sherburn. 
Frank  Harold  Syrett. 
James  Martin  Talbot. 
Charles  Mabbett  Travis. 
George  Wood  Vinal. 
Frederick  Franklin  Voorhees. 
Frederick  Warren  Wright. 
Margaret  Elizabeth  Donahoe. 
Faye  Mildred  Keene. 


APPENDIX  167 

The  Degree  of  Master  of  Science  on: 

Mrs.  Lucia  Washburn  (Hazen)  Webster^  B.A., 
Mt.  Holyoke  College,  1902. 

The  Degree  of  Master  of  Arts  on: 

George  Ellsworth  Bishop^  B.A.,  1901. 
Frank  Pearl  Fletcher,  B.A.,  1904. 


The  following  honorary  degrees  were  conferred: 
The  Degree  of  Master  of  Arts  on: 

Alonzo  Howard  Clark, 

Smithsonian  Institution,  Washington,  D.  C. 

Abram  Sheckleton  Kavanagh, 

Superintendent  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Hospital, 
Brooklyn,  N.  Y. 

Robert  Fulton  Raymond, 
New  Bedford,  Mass. 

The  Degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity  on: 

Arthur  William  Byrt, 

Superintendent  and  Corresponding  Secretary  of  the 
Brooklyn  Church  Society,  Brooklyn,  N.  Y. 

Nathaniel  Walling  Clark, 

Presiding  Elder,  Italy  Conference  of  the  Methodist 
Episcopal  Church,  Rome,  Italy. 

Andrew  Jackson  Coultas,  Jr., 

Presiding  Elder  of  the  Providence  District,  New  Eng- 
land Southern  Conference  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal 
Church,  Providence,  R.  I. 

John  Galbraith, 

Presiding  Elder  of  the  Boston  District,  New  England 
Conference  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  Dor- 
chester, Mass. 


1 68  APPENDIX 

Charles  Le  Roy  Goodell^ 

Pastor  of  Calvary  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  New 
York,  N.  Y. 

Thompson  Hoadley  Landon, 

Principal  of  Bordentown  Military  Institute,  Bordentown, 
N.J. 

William  Douglas  Mackenzie, 

President  of  Hartford  Theological  Seminary,  Hart- 
ford, Conn. 

Albert  Julius  Nast, 

Editor  of  Der  Christliche  Apologete,  Cincinnati,  O. 

Henry  Clay  Sheldon, 

Professor  of  Systematic  Theology,  Boston  University, 
Boston,  Mass. 

Charles  Macaulay  Stuart, 

Professor  of  Sacred  Rhetoric,  Garrett  Biblical  Insti- 
tute, Evanston,  .111. 

Alexander  Harrison  Tuttle, 

Pastor  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  Summit, 
N.J. 

The  Degree  of  Doctor  of  Science  on: 

Edward  Bennett  Rosa, 

Physicist  of  the  National  Bureau  of  Standards,  Wash- 
ington, D.  C. 

Charles  Wardell  Stiles, 

Chief  of  the  Division  of  Medical  Zoology,  United  States 
Public  Health  and  Marine  Hospital  Service,  Wash- 
ington, D.  C. 

Alfred  Charles  True, 

Director  of  Office  of  Experiment  Stations,  Department 
of  Agriculture,  Washington,  D.  C. 

The  Degree  of  Doctor  of  Laws  on: 

Darius  Baker, 

Justice  of  the  Superior  Court  of  Rhode  Island,  Newport, 
R.  I. 


APPENDIX  169 

Flavel  Sweeten  Luther,  Jr., 

President  of  Trinity  College,  Hartford,  Conn. 

Arthur  Eugene  Sutherland, 

Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  State  of  New  York, 
Rochester,  N.  Y. 

Herbert  Welch, 

President  of  Ohio  Wesleyan  University,  Delaware,  O. 


APPENDIX    II 


NEW   BUILDINGS 


WILLBUR    FISK    HALL 


lltUbttr  3Ft0k  l^all 

The  laying  of  the  corner-stone  of  Willbur  Fisk  Hall  was 
conducted  informally  at  2  P.  M.,  Saturday,  February  21,  1903. 
After  a  few  appropriate  remarks,  President  Bradford  P.  Ray- 
mond deposited  a  sealed  metal  box  in  the  cavity  made  for  it  in 
the  corner-stone,  and  then  proceeded  to  lay  the  stone. 

On  Tuesday  afternoon,  June  28,  1904,  Fisk  Hall  was  formally 
dedicated.  The  exercises  were  brief  and  simple.  Bishop  Cyrus 
D.  Foss,  '54,  read  from  the  Bible  and  offered  prayer.  H.  C.  M. 
Ingraham,  '64,  President  of  the  Board  of  Trustees,  presented  the 
keys  of  the  building  to  President  Raymond,  who,  in  accepting 
the  charge,  thanked  the  alumni  and  others  who  had  aided  in  the 
erection  of  the  new  hall.  After  the  exercises  the  building  was 
thrown  open  for  inspection. 

Fisk  Hall,  of  which  a  picture  is  shown  opposite,  is 
occupied  by  the  Departments  of  Language,  Literature,  History, 
Economics  and  Philosophy.  The  building  is  of  Portland  brown- 
stone,  113  by  62  feet  in  dimensions,  three  stories  in  height  above 
a  lofty  and  well-lighted  basement  story.  It  contains  ten  private 
studies  for  professors  in  charge  of  departments,  fourteen  lecture 
rooms,  seven  commodious  seminary  rooms,  and  a  well-appointed 
psychological  laboratory. 

In  the  planning  and  construction  of  the  building,  careful  atten- 
tion was  paid  to  matters  of  heating,  lighting,  ventilation  and 
drainage.  It  is  believed  that  in  dignity  of  external  appearance, 
interior  finish,  convenience  of  arrangement,  and  adaptation  at 
all  points  to  the  uses  for  which  it  is  designed,  it  is  a  model  college 
building. 

The  architects  were  Cady,  Berg  &  See,  of  New  York  City. 
The  cost  of  the  building  was  one  hundred  and  fourteen  thousand 
dollars. 


JOHN    BELL    SCOTT    MEMORIAL 


UNIVERSITY 

OF 


The  John  Bell  Scott  Memorial  is  a  Physical  Laboratory.  It 
was  the  gift  of  the  late  Charles  Scott,  of  Philadelphia,  and  of  his 
son,  Charles  Scott,  of  the  Class  of  1886,  in  memory  of  John  Bell 
Scott,  of  the  Class  of  1881,  who  died  of  disease  contracted  while 
serving  as  Chaplain  of  the  United  States  Cruiser  St.  Paul  during 
the  Spanish-American  War. 

The  corner-stone  of  the  building  was  laid  June  30,  1903,  by 
Mr.  Charles  Scott,  '86.  The  dedication  occurred  December  7. 
1904. 

The  dedication  exercises  were  held  partly  in  Memorial  Chapel 
and  partly  in  the  Scott  Laboratory.  At  2.30  P.  M.  a  large  audi- 
ence gathered  in  Memorial  Chapel  to  hear  the  address  of  Pro- 
fessor Edward  B.  Rosa,  Ph.D.,  '86,  Physicist  of  the  National 
Bureau  of  Standards,  of  Washington,  D.  C.  The  introductory 
services  consisted  of  the  reading  of  the  28th  chapter  of  Job,  and 
prayer,  by  the  Reverend  David  G.  Downey,  D.D.,  '84,  and  the 
singing  of  the  following  hymn,  written  for  the  occasion  by  Louip 
J.  Magee,  '85 : 

Through  !^ature's  realm,  o'er  sea  and  land, 

We  own  a  force  divine ; 
The  working  of  an  unseen  hand, 

A  Master's  wise  design. 

All-knowing  Spirit,  in  whose  sight 

Our  mysteries  are  plain, 
Hasten  the  march  of  Truth;   give  light 

Where  Science  gropes  in  vain. 

Reveal  thy  plan,  inspire  our  quest, 

Lead  on  where  we  explore. 
Fresh  wonders  yet  make  manifest 

From  out  thy  secret  store. 

We  sound  the  depths,  we  search  the  way. 

And  probe  for  hidden  cause; 
In  human  boldness  we  essay 

To  formulate  thy  laws. 


i8o  APPENDIX 

Old  thought  to  new  may  yield  its  place, 

Our  systems  rise  and  fall; 
Strengthen  the  Faith  that  still  can  trace 

Unchanging  Love  through  all. 

The  subject  of  Professor  Rosa's  address  was,  "The  National 
Bureau  of  Standards,  and  its  Relation  to  Scientific  and  Technical 
Laboratories."  The  text  of  the  address,  as  also  of  the  other 
addresses  delivered  on  this  occasion,  is  given  below.  After  the 
address,  the  Trustees,  Faculty,  and  invited  guests  adjourned  to  the 
main  lecture-room  of  the  Scott  Laboratory.  Here  Mr.  Henry 
C.  M.  Ingraham,  '64,  Chairman  of  the  Building  Committee, 
delivered  an  address,  presenting  the  building  on  behalf  of  Mr. 
Scott  and  the  Building  Committee,  and  President  Bradford  P. 
Raymond  spoke  in  response.  After  the  conclusion  of  President 
Raymond's  address,  the  following  hymn,  first  sung  at  the  dedica- 
tion of  Judd  Hall,  and  written  for  that  occasion  by  Professor 
C.  T.  Winchester,  was  sung  under  the  leadership  of  the  college 
Glee  Club: 


The  Lord  our  God  alone  is  strong; 

His  hands  build  not  for  one  brief  day; 
His  wondrous  works,  through  ages  long, 

His  wisdom  and  his  power  display. 

His  mountains  lift  their  solemn  forms; 

To  watch  in  silence  o'er  the  land ; 
The  rolling  ocean,  rocked  with  storms, 

Sleeps  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand. 

Beyond  the  heavens  he  sits  alone, 

The  universe  obeys  his  nod; 
The  lightning-rifts  disclose  his  throne, 

And  thunders  voice  the  name  of  God. 

Thou  sovereign  God,  receive  this  gift 
Thy  wilHng  servants  offer  thee; 

Accept  the  prayers  that  thousands  lift, 
And  let  these  halls  thy  temple  be. 

And  let  those  learn,  who  here  shall  meet, 
True  wisdom  is  with  reverence  crowned, 

And  Science  walks  with  humble  feet 
To  seek  the  God  that  Faith  hath  found. 


APPENDIX  i8i 

The  exercises  closed  with  the  reading  of  Prov.  iii,  13-23, 
and  a  prayer  of  dedication,  by  Bishop  Edward  G.  Andrews, 
LL.D.,  '47. 

After  the  dedication,  an  informal  reception  was  held  in  one 
of  the  large  rooms  on  the  third  floor,  and  the  building  was  thrown 
open  for  inspection. 

The  John  Bell  Scott  Memorial,  of  which  a  picture  is  shown  fac- 
ing page  179,  is  constructed  of  Harvard  brick  and  Indiana  lime- 
stone. Its  main  part  has  a  front  of  102  feet  and  a  depth  of  51  feet, 
and  in  the  rear  is  an  extension  of  50  x  30  feet.  The  building  con- 
sists of  basement,  three  stories  and  attic,  except  that  the  third  story 
is  omitted  in  the  extension,  over  the  main  lecture  room,  the  lat- 
ter being  situated  on  the  second  floor,  its  ceiling  being  carried 
up  higher  than  those  of  the  other  rooms  on  the  same  floor.  This 
lecture  room  is  about  44x40x17  feet  in  size,  and  contains 
nearly  200  seats.  A  smaller  lecture  room  on  the  third  floor  seats 
about  40  persons.  The  building  contains  22  rooms  for  experi- 
mental work,  elementary  and  advanced,  in  addition  to  lecture 
and  apparatus  rooms,  photographic  dark  rooms,  store-rooms, 
offices,  a  library  and  a  room  for  draughting  and  computing. 
There  is  also  a  tower  4x6  feet  in  cross  section,  with  a  height 
of  54  feet  in  the  clear,  which  can  be  used  for  experiments 
requiring  great  vertical  extension. 

The  building  is  abundantly  supplied  with  water  and  gas  con- 
nections throughout,  and  is  also  equipped  with  an  exceptionally 
extensive  and  complete  system  of  wiring  for  the  purpose  of  dis- 
tributing to  all  points,  for  experimental  use,  alternating  and 
direct  currents  from  the  city  mains,  as  well  as  current  from  the 
storage  batteries  in  the  basement.  For  the  most  part  the  interior 
is  finished  with  exposed  brick  walls,  painted  a  light  tint,  and 
with  exposed  floor  timbers  and  pipe  work. 

The  building  was  designed  by  Mr.  Charles  A.  Rich,  of  New 
York  City.  Its  cost  amounted  to  one  hundred  and  eighteen 
thousand  dollars. 


ADDRESS 

By  Professor  Edward  B.  Rosa,  Ph.D. 

aWf^  Nati0nal  Surrau  nf  ^tatt&arbfi  mi  tta  rriattott  to 
^rt^ttttfir  mh  S^rlytttral  HabnratcmB 

THE  dedication  of  a  large  and  well-appointed  building,  to  be 
devoted  exclusively  to  instruction  and  research  in  physics, 
is  a  notable  event  in  the  history  of  a  college.  In  this  instance 
it  is  the  realization  of  a  hope  long  cherished  by  many,  and  by 
none  more  than  by  the  present  speaker.  That  so  splendid  a 
building  has  been  deemed  necessary  for  the  work  to  be  done  in 
physics  suggests  two  things.  First,  the  high  standard  which 
Wesleyan  is  setting  for  herself  in  this  as  in  other  departments 
of  work,  and  second,  the  rapid  development  which  has  occurred 
in  recent  years  in  physics,  rendering  imperative  an  equipment 
for  experimental  work  of  an  entirely  different  order  of  magnitude 
from  that  thought  sufficient  a  generation  ago.  So  great  has  been 
the  demand  for  the  best  instruments  and  standards  to  be  used  in 
experimental  work,  both  in  pure  and  applied  physics,  that  the 
government  has  been  led  to  establish  at  Washington  a  national 
laboratory,  one  of  whose  functions  is  to  cooperate  with  scientific 
and  technical  institutions  and  manufacturers  in  the  work  of 
improving  instruments  and  standards,  and  developing  methods 
of  measurement.  It,  therefore,  seems  not  inappropriate  that  some- 
thing be  said  on  this  occasion  concerning  this  work  of  the  national 
government,  so  recently  inaugurated  as  not  to  be  generally  known. 
The  Bureau  of  Standards  was  established  by  Act  of  Congress, 
in  response  to  a  demand  for  such  an  institution  on  the  part  of 
many  scientists,  engineers,  manufacturers  and  representatives  of 
the  national  government.  The  high  order  of  accuracy  demanded 
in  modern  engineering  practice  and  in  scientific  research  made  it 
necessary  that  manufacturers  of  scientific  and  engineering  instru- 
ments  should  possess   correct   standards  of   length,   mass   and 


APPENDIX  183 

volume,  as  well  as  electrical,  optical  and  thermometric  standards, 
and  be  able  to  have  them  reverified  from  time  to  time.  It  was 
also  important  that  anyone  engaged  in  scientific  or  engineering 
work  could  have  his  instruments  and  standards  tested  whenever 
necessary.  The  Office  of  Weights  and  Measures,  at  Washing- 
ton, had  been  equipped  to  do  some  of  the  work  required  in  the 
verification  of  length,  mass  and  volume  for  many  years,  but  it 
was  necessary  to  send  electrical  standards,  thermometers  and 
pyrometers,  and  many  other  kinds  of  apparatus  to  Europe  to  be 
tested  when  results  of  the  highest  accuracy  were  desired.  As 
this  was  both  expensive  and  time-consuming,  the  consequence 
was  that  only  infrequently  were  these  more  accurate  tests 
obtained.  The  United  States  held  a  creditable  position  among 
the  nations  of  the  earth  in  physical  science  and  possessed  some 
of  the  best  physical  laboratories  in  the  world ;  it  was  leading  the 
world  in  the  manufacture  of  electrical  machinery  and  some  kinds 
of  electrical  instruments.  To  be  obliged  to  ask  the  German 
Imperial  or  other  foreign  laboratories  to  do  our  testing  for  us, 
because  we  lacked  a  well-equipped  national  laboratory  for  doing 
such  work,  was  clearly  a  situation  that  ought  to  be  corrected, 
and  Congress  acted  prom.ptly  when  the  importance  of  the  matter 
was  brought  to  its  attention.  Appropriations  were  made  for 
laboratory  buildings  and  equipment,  and  for  a  director  and  a 
small  scientific  staff,  and  the  Bureau  began  its  work  July  i,  1901. 
President  McKinley  appointed  as  director,  Professor  S.  W. 
Stratton,  of  Chicago  University,  to  whom,  more  than  to  anyone 
else,  is  due  the  credit  for  the  establishment  and  the  success  of  the 
Bureau.  A  careful  study  of  the  Physikalisch-Technische  Reichs- 
anstalt  and  of  other  European  laboratories  was  made  in  con- 
nection with  the  designing  of  the  laboratory  buildings  and  the 
selection  of  the  equipment,  and  many  valuable  suggestions  were 
derived  therefrom.  The  laboratories  have,  however,  been  con- 
structed after  American  rather  than  European  models,  although 
in  their  equipment  it  has  been  found  necessary  to  draw  very 
heavily  upon  European  instrument  makers. 

The  Bureau  began  its  work  in  temporary  quarters  and  has  been 
developing  methods,  building  and  acquiring  apparatus,  and  doing 
testing  for  the  government  and  the  public,  while  the  laboratory 
buildings  have  been  under  construction.  The  larger  of  the  two 
buildings  was  only  recently  completed  and  the  Bureau  is  just 


1 84  APPENDIX 

now  moving  into  it,  the  first  building  having  been  occupied  nearly 
a  year  ago.  We  now  find  ourselves,  about  three  and  a  half  years 
from  the  organization  of  the  Bureau,  in  possession  of  buildings 
and  equipment  costing  about  $600,000,  with  a  personnel  care- 
fully selected  through  the  civil  service  and  numbering  altogether 
seventy-one,  maintained  by  annual  appropriations  amounting  to 
nearly  $200,000,  and,  judged  by  the  magnitude  and  importance 
of  the  output  of  testing  and  investigations,  ranking  second  only 
to  the  great  German  Reichsanstalt  among  the  government  labora- 
tories of  the  world  doing  this  kind  of  work. 

After  this  brief  epitome  of  the  history  of  the  Bureau,  let  me 
state  more  particularly  something  of  its  work  and  of  its  relation 
to  the  scientific  and  technical  laboratories  of  the  coimtry.  The 
work  of  the  Bureau  may  be  briefly  specified  under  three  separate 
heads  as  follows: 

1.  To  acquire  and  preserve  standards  of  measure  and  to  cer- 
tify copies  of  the  same,  and  to  test  and  investigate  measuring 
instruments  and  to  determine  the  properties  of  materials. 

2.  To  conduct  researches  and  to  investigate  and  develop 
methods  of  measurement;  to  improve  instruments  and  apparatus 
for  physical  measurements  and  to  devise  apparatus,  especially  for 
use  in  testing  and  in  precise  measurements. 

3.  To  distribute  information  regarding  instruments  and 
standards  to  manufacturers,  state  and  city  sealers  of  weights  and 
measures,  scientific  and  technical  laboratories,  and  to  any  and 
everyone  applying  for  such  information. 

These  three  functions  of  thfe  Bureau  are  closely  interdependent. 
To  acquire  a  standard  in  some  cases  involves  an  elaborate  investi- 
gation and  the  independent  determination  of  the  value  of  the 
standard:  and  to  preserve  it  may  involve  subsequent  redeter- 
minations of  its  value  to  ascertain  whether  any  change  has 
occurred.  A  new  kind  of  test  often  involves  the  investigation 
of  methods  of  measurement,  or  the  determination  of  new  stand- 
ards, or  the  construction  of  a  new  instrument.  Thus,  research 
and  testing  are  intimately  connected  in  most  of  the  work  of  the 
Bureau. 

The  distribution  of  information,  the  third  function  of  the 
Bureau  of  Standards,  is  accomplished  through  correspondence 
and  the  circulars  and  bulletins  issued  by  the  Bureau,  and  also 
by  the  personal  visits  of  people  seeking  such  information. 


APPENDIX  185 

The  three  fundamental  standards  of  measure  for  physical  quan- 
tities are  those  of  length,  mass  and  time.  The  oldest  of  these  is 
the  unit  of  time,  the  second.  This  ancient  unit  has  successfully 
withstood  every  attempt  to  replace  it  by  a  decimal  sub-multiple 
of  the  day.  The  earth  itself  is  our  fundamental  timepiece,  every 
revolution  upon  its  axis  counting  off  86,400  sidereal  seconds,  from 
which  we  immediately  derive  our  standard  second.  No  clock  is 
so  perfect  a  timepiece  as  the  earth,  and  all  the  standard  clocks  in 
the  world  are  corrected  by  it.  What  the  astronomer  does  in 
determining  the  time  by  astronomical  observation,  is  to  read  off 
the  time  of  day  or  night  by  means  of  a  telescope  on  the  starry  face 
of  the  celestial  clock.  The  telescope  corresponds  to  the  hour  hand 
of  a  24-hour  dial  (there  is  no  minute  hand),  and  the  stars  mark 
the  sub-divisions  of  the  dial.  The  best  made  clocks  of  human 
invention  go  fast  or  slow  by  at  least  some  fraction  of  a  second 
each  day,  but  there  is  no  proof  to  show  that  the  terrestrial  clock 
deviates  by  so  much  in  a  thousand  years.  Thus  the  unit  of  time 
is  a  natural  unit,  easily  obtained  direct  from  nature  and  univer- 
sally employed  the  world  over.  The  Bureau  of  Standards  does 
not  intend  to  make  independent  time  observations,  but  will  cor- 
rect its  standard  clocks  from  the  observations  made  at  the  neigh- 
boring Naval  Observatory. 

The  unit  of  length  has  a  very  different  history.  The  foot  has 
been  the  most  widely  used  measure  of  length,  both  in  ancient  and 
modem  times.  It  was  derived,  as  the  name  suggests,  from  the 
length  of  the  human  foot,  and  is  thus  a  natural  unit  like  the 
second;  but,  owing  to  the  multiplicity  of  human  feet  and  their 
varying  dimensions,  this  unit  has  varied  greatly  in  different 
countries  and  in  different  ages,  its  length  ranging  all  the  way 
from  the  ancient  Welsh  foot  of  9  inches  to  the  Piedmont  foot 
of  20  inches.  In  modern  times  it  has  varied  from  the  Spanish 
foot  of  less  than  eleven  inches  to  the  Venice  foot  of  over  13 
inches,  almost  ever}^  country  using  a  foot  of  different  length. 
The  confusion  resulting  from  this  lack  of  uniformity  prompted 
the  French  in  1799  to  adopt  a  new  unit  of  length ;  and  remember- 
ing how  surely  and  elegantly  the  unit  of  time  is  fixed  by  the  rota- 
sions  of  the  earth,  they  sought  to  make  the  meter,  the  new  standard 
of  length,  permanent  and  inflexible,  by  basing  it  upon  the  dimen- 
sions of  the  earth.  The  meter  was  chosen  to  be  one  ten-millionth 
part  of  the  distance  from  the  equator  to  the  pole  of  the  earth  at 


1 86  APPENDIX 

a  particular  meridian,  and  was  fixed  in  concrete  form  as  the  length 
of  a  platinum  bar,  which  bar  has  since  been  carefully  preserved 
in  Paris.  Subsequent  and  more  accurate  measuremeijts  have 
given  a  slightly  different  value  for  the  circumference  of  the  earth, 
so  that  the  meter  is  known  not  to  be  as  originally  intended,  just 
one  ten-millionth  of  that  particular  quadrant  of  the  earth's  cir- 
cumference. The  meter,  has,  however,  not  been  changed,  its 
value  being  fixed  by  the  length  of  the  platinum  standard  and  not 
by  the  earth.  Thus  the  platinum  bar  has  become  the  primary 
standard  of  length,  instead  of  a  secondary  standard  as  was 
originally  intended.  This  is  a  happy  result,  for  the  difficulty  of 
comparing  a  meter  with  the  dimensions  of  the  earth  is  too  great 
to  make  the  latter  of  any  value  as  a  standard  of  length.  The 
original  standard  meter  has  been  reproduced  many  times  in 
platinum  and  iridio-platinum,  and  many  of  the  civilized  nations 
of  the  earth  possess  such  duplicates.  We  have  two  of  them  at 
the  Bureau  of  Standards  in  Washington,  one  of  which  was 
recently  taken  to  Paris  by  Mr.  Fischer,  and  re-compared  with  the 
standard  of  the  International  Bureau.  The  results  showed  almost 
perfect  agreement  with  the  comparison  made  15  years  previously, 
the  difference,  if  any,  being  not  greater  than  about  0.5  of  a  micron, 
that  is  go ^()() inch.  This  is  one  part  in  2,000,000  of  the  length  of 
the  bar,  and  represents  about  the  limit  of  accuracy  obtainable  in 
comparisons  of  this  nature,  although  the  computed  probable 
error  of  the  observations  was  only  .02  of  one  micron,  or  less  than 
a  millionth  of  an  inch. 

The  third  fundamental  unit,  that  of  mass,  has  likewise  varied 
in  different  countries  and  in  different  ages.  The  most  widely 
used  unit  was  the  pound,  and  before  the  metric  system  came  into 
use  there  were  hundreds  of  different  pounds  in  use  in  Europe, 
differing  from  country  to  country,  and  from  province  to  province, 
and  varying  also  according  to  the  commodity  to  be  measured. 
The  ancient  Roman  pound  was  equivalent  to  a  little  less  than  12 
of  our  avoirdupois  ounces,  and  from  it  were  derived  the  various 
Italian  pounds,  varying  in  value  from  the  Venice  light  pound, 
equivalent  to  about  eleven  of  our  avoirdupois  ounces,  and  the 
Naples  silk-pound  and  the  Milan  pound  of  about  twelve  ounces,  to 
the  Piedmont  pound  of  about  thirteen  ounces  and  the  Venice 
heavy  pound  of  about  seventeen  ounces.  There  were  silk  pounds, 
and  chocolate  pounds,  and  table  pounds,  and  goldsmith  pounds, 


APPENDIX  187 

and  medicinal  pounds ;  there  were  light  pounds,  and  heavy 
pounds,  and  half -heavy  pounds,  and  extra-heavy  pounds.  There 
were  pounds  of  12,  14,  15,  16,  17,  18,  20,  21,  22,  24,  28,  30  and 
36  ounces,  and  the  ounces  had  varying  value  in  different  countries 
and  in  different  provinces  of  the  same  country. 

To  remedy  this  distressing  confusion  the  French,  in  1799,  at 
the  same  time  the  meter  was  chosen,  adopted  the  kilogram  as  the 
unit  of  mass,  fixing  it  concretely  in  a  cylindrical  mass  of  platinum, 
which  was  intended  to  be  equal  to  the  mass  of  a  cubic  decimeter 
of  water  at  the  temperature  of  its  maximum  density.  This,  like 
the  meter,  was  designed  to  be  a  natural  unit  that  could  be  derived 
originally  at  any  subsequent  time  and  in  any  country.  But,  as 
in  the  case  of  the  meter,  later  determinations  showed  that  the 
kilogram  was  not,  as  was  intended,  exactly  equal  to  the  mass  of 
a  cubic  decimeter  of  water,  and  hence  the  platinum  secondary 
standard  was  adopted  as  a  primary  standard  of  mass,  and  no 
further  attempt  was  made  to  make  it  a  natural  unit.  All  other 
countries  using  the  metric  system  use  carefully  constructed  copies 
of  this  original  kilogram  as  their  standard  of  mass.  The  process 
of  weighing  is  even  more  accurate  than  the  comparison  of  lengths, 
so  that  the  standard  kilograms  of  the  various  countries  of  the 
world  are  practically  perfect  duplicates  of  the  original  and  of 
each  other. 

In  1875  ^  conference  of  the  representatives  of  seventeen  nations 
was  held  in  Paris,  and  a  permanent  International  Bureau  of 
Weights  and  Measures  was  established  and  is  still  maintained. 
It  is  located  at  Sevres,  near  Paris,  and  is  supported  jointly  by  the 
participating  nations.  Its  duties  are  to  care  for  the  fundamental 
standards  of  length  and  mass,  to  furnish  accurately  adjusted 
copies  of  the  same,  and  to  compare  standards  which  may  be 
returned  from  time  to  time.  (Some  other  testing  is  done,  par- 
ticularly the  calibration  of  thermometers.)  The  work  is  of  the 
highest  order  of  accuracy,  and  leaves  little  to  be  desired  so  far 
as  standards  of  length  and  mass  are  concerned.  Testing  is  done, 
however,  only  for  the  governments,  not  for  private  individuals 
or  institutions. 

The  metric  system  has  been  adopted  by  nearly  all  the  civilized 
nations  of  the  world,  excepting  Great  Britain  and  her  colonies 
and  the  United  States,  and  is  universally  used  throughout  the 
world  for  scientific  purposes.     Electrical  units  are  all  based  on 


1 88  APPENDIX 

'the  metric  system,  and  hence  electrical  engineers  employ  the 
metric  system  almost  exclusively,  even  in  this  country.  The  gain 
to  science  and  commerce  which  resulted  from  the  general  adop- 
tion of  the  metric  system  in  Continental  Europe  can  scarcely  be 
overestimated,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  it  will  be  soon  adopted 
also  by  the  EngHsh-speaking  countries  of  the  world. 

The  avoirdupois  standard  for  the  United  States  was  defined  in 
1830  as  |^-§-^  of  the  Troy  standard  pound  of  the  mint,  which, 
in  turn,  was  a  copy  of  the  British  Troy  pound,  derived  from  the 
standard  of  Queen  Elizabeth  made  in  1588.  The  latter  was 
derived  from  the  standard  of  Edward  III,  and  this  is  said  to  have 
come  from  the  city  of  Troyes,  France,  hence  the  name,  Troy 
pound.  The  metric  system  was  legalized  in  the  United  States  in 
1866,  and  the  meter  was  declared  to  be  equivalent  to  39.37  inches 
and  the  kilogram  to  2.204  pounds.  (The  International  Bureau 
began  its  work  in  1880.)  The  iridio-platinum  prototypes  of  the 
metric  standards  were  received  in  this  country  in  1889.  These 
were  so  much  superior  as  standards  to  the  brass  standard  pound 
and  the  bronze  yard,  that  in  1893  the  metric  standards  were 
adopted  as  fundamental  by  the  United  States,  and  the  pound  and 
yard  were  defined  in  terms  of  them.  Thus  the  metric  system 
is  not  only  legalized  in  this  country,  but  our  fundamental  stand- 
ards are  the  meter  and  the  kilogram,  and  all  our  weights  and 
measures  are  derived  from  these  metric  standards,  using  the  legal 
equivalents. 

Few  people,  perhaps,  realize  how  needlessly  complex  our  sys- 
tem of  weights  and  measures  really  is.  Instead  of  a  single  unit  of 
weight  and  of  length  with  multiples  and  sub-multiples  having 
ratios  of  ten,  and  a  unit  of  volume  simply  related  to  the  unit  of 
length,  as  is  the  case  in  the  metric  system,  we  have  a  multi- 
plicity of  units  and  all  kinds  of  odd  ratios  for  the  multiples  and 
sub-multiples.  I  beg  your  indulgence  for  a  moment  to  remind 
you  of  some  of  the  absurdities  of  our  system.  But  first  recall 
how  much  simpler  and  more  convenient  our  decimal  coinage  is 
than  the  English  coinage.  Nothing  could  be  simpler  than  the 
expression  of  values  in  dollars  and  cents ;  the  use  of  pounds,  shil- 
lings and  pence,  to  say  nothing  of  guineas,  crowns  and  farthings 
with  their  odd  ratios  being  cumbersome  in  comparison.  But  our 
weights  and  measures  are  far  more  cumbersome  and  complicated 
than  the  English  coinage.    We  weigh  most  merchandise  by  avoir- 


APPENDIX  189 

dupois  weight,  gold  and  silver  by  Troy  weight,  medicines  by 
apothecaries'  weight,  diamonds  by  diamond  carat  weight.  We 
have  dry  quarts  and  liquid  quarts,  long  tons  and  short  tons,  and 
a  hundred-weight  is  not  100,  but  112  pounds.  Coal  is  usually  sold 
at  wholesale  by  the  long  ton  and  retailed  by  the  short  ton.  A 
bushel  sometimes  means  2150.4  cubic  inches  and  sometimes  it 
means  a  certain  number  of  pounds  weight  of  a  commodity.  The 
American  bushel  is  derived  from  the  old  English  Winchester 
bushel,  but  the  legal  English  bushel  of  the  present  day  is  smaller 
by  32  cubic  inches.  On  the  contrary,  the  English  gallon  is  much 
larger  than  the  American  gallon,  the  difference  amounting  to 
about  20  per  cent.  We  measure  wood  by  the  cord,  stone  and  earth 
by  the  perch,  or  the  cubic  yard.  Moreover,  among  the  different 
states  of  the  Union  are  considerable  differences  in  custom  and  in 
legal  equivalents.  We  are,  of  course,  much  better  off  than  were 
the  countries  of  Europe  a  century  ago,  but  the  difference  is  all 
too  small. 

Our  medieval  system  of  weights  and  measures  is,  however, 
too  deeply  rooted  to  be  easily  displaced.  But  the  metric  system  is 
being  used  in  this  country  more  than  is  generally  realized,  and 
our  rapidly  growing  foreign  trade  is  bringing  it  more  than  ever 
to  the  attention  of  merchants  and  manufacturers.  In  England 
a  strong  effort  is  being  made  to  introduce  the  metric  system,  with 
the  hope  that  ultimately  a  decimal  system  of  currency  may  also  be 
adopted.  The  English  colonies  are  even  more  progressive  in  the 
matter  than  the  mother  country,  and  strong  influences  are  at  work 
to  secure  the  adoption  of  the  decimal  system  throughout  the  Brit- 
ish Empire.  It  will  be  greatly  to  the  advantage  of  the  United 
States  to  keep  abreast  of  this  movement,  and  not  to  be  the  last 
among  the  civilized  nations  of  the  world  to  throw  off  the  incubus 
of  an  incoherent  system  of  weights  and  measures,  whose  only 
claim  to  continuance  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  is  now  in  general  use. 

The  testing  of  lengths  and  masses  constitutes  one  of  the  most 
important  branches  of  the  work  of  the  Bureau.  As  I  have  said, 
this  work  has  been  done  by  the  government  for  many  years,  but 
the  facilities  for  this  kind  of  testing  are  now  being  immensely 
improved  so  as  to  extend  the  range  and  increase  the  accuracy  of 
the  work.  The  new  laboratories  will  contain  many  new  balances 
and  comparators,  and  every  precaution  is  being  taken  to  secure 
the  most  favorable  conditions  possible  for  precision  work.  When 
the  installation  is  completed  it  will  probably  be  the  best  of  the 
kind  in  the  world. 


190  APPENDIX 

I  have  said  that  the  three  fundamental  units  of  measure  are 
those  of  length,  mass  and  time,  or  the  meter,  kilogram,  and 
second.  From  these  are  systematically  derived  various  other  units, 
all  forming  what  is  generally  called  the  centimeter-gram-second 
system,  or  more  briefly,  the  c.  g.  s.  system.  It  is  not  my  purpose 
to  enumerate  the  various  derived  units  which  are  employed  in 
scientific  and  technical  work,  but  rather  to  describe  briefly  some 
of  those  employed  in  the  testing  and  research  work  of  the  Bureau 
of  Standards.  And  first  let  me  speak  of  the  work  in  heat  and 
thermometry.  The  testing  of  thermometers  is  one  of  the  most 
important  branches  of  our  work,  and  is  under  the  charge  of  Dr. 
Charles  W.  Waidner,  who  is  personally  known  to  some  of  you. 
Dr.  Waidner  and  his  assistants  have  devoted  a  great  deal  of 
effort  to  the  acquisition  of  reliable  standard  thermometers  and  to 
the  investigation  of  instruments  and  methods.  In  this  they  have 
availed  themselves  of  the  results  of  the  magnificent  work  that 
has  been  done  in  this  field  in  Europe,  more  especially  at  the  Inter- 
national Bureau  and  the  Reichsanstalt,  and  by  the  thermometer- 
makers  of  France  and  Germany.  For  our  present  purpose 
thermometers  may  be  conveniently  grouped  as  follows :  First,  pre- 
cision mercury  thermometers,  to  be  used  as  standards  or  for 
scientific  purposes.  They  are  calibrated  very  elaborately  and 
are  capable  of  high  accuracy.  Second,  ordinary  mercury  ther- 
mometers and  clinical  thermometers.  The  Bureau  tests  clinical 
thermometers  by  the  thousand,  and  we  hope  that  before  long  they 
will  come  to  us  by  the  tens  of  thousands.  (The  fee  is  only  12^ 
cents  each  when  done  in  quantity,  25  cents  for  a  single  one.) 
Clinical  thermometers  often  change  if  graduated  new,  and  hence 
they  ought  always  to  be  aged,  tested  and  certified  to  insure  their 
accuracy.  Third,  high  temperature  mercury  thermometers  of 
hard  glass,  with  nitrogen  under  pressure  above  the  mercury 
column,  reading  up  to  550°  C.  (or  about  1,000°  F.).  Fourth, 
platinum  resistance  thermometers,  thermocouples  and  other 
forms  of  pyrometers  suitable  for  measuring  furnace  tem- 
peratures up  to  about  1,600°  C.  (or  2,900°  F.).  Such  instruments 
are  used  in  many  manufacturing  processes  as  well  as  in  research 
problems,  and  hence  are  found  both  in  scientific  and  technical 
laboratories.  Fifth,  optical  pyrometers  for  measuring  the  tem- 
perature of  the  hottest  furnaces  and,  approximately,  even  the 
temperature  of  the  electric  arc,  the  highest  temperature  attainable 


APPENDIX  191 

by  any  known  means,  namely,  about  3,700°  C.  (or  about  6,700° 
F.).  An  investigation  on  this  subject  at  the  Bureau  has  recently 
been  published  by  Drs.  Waidner  and  Burgess.  Sixth,  low  tem- 
perature thermometers  for  temperature  below  the  freezing  point 
of  mercury,  even  down  to  the  temperatures  of  liquid  air  and  of 
liquid  or  solid  hydrogen.  Such  thermometers  use  pentane  or 
toluene ;  or  a  copper-constantan  thermocouple  is  employed.  For 
the  very  lowest  temperatures  helium  gas  is  used,  helium  being 
the  only  gas  not  liquified  at  the  temperature  of  solid  hydrogen, 
namely,  about  16°  above  absolute  zero,  or  257°  C.  (or  430°  F.) 
below  the  freezing  point  of  Water. 

From  the  temperature  of  solid  hydrogen  to  that  of  the  electric 
arc  is  a  wide  range  indeed,  and  a  very  considerable  equipment  of 
apparatus  and  machinery  is  necessary  to  produce  and  to  measure 
any  temperature  throughout  this  range.  For  the  higher  tem- 
peratures gas  and  electric  furnaces  are  required.  For  the  lower 
temperatures  a  refrigerating  plant  and  apparatus  for  liquefying 
carbon  dioxide,  air  and  hydrogen  are  required.  The  Bureau  has 
recently  purchased  the  low  temperature  plant  which  was  operated 
as  an  exhibit  by  the  British  Government  at  the  St.  Louis  Exposi- 
tion. This  was  one  of  the  most  interesting  exhibits  of  the  entire 
World's  Fair.  Liquid  hydrogen  was  produced  in  larger  quantity 
by  this  plant  than  had  ever  been  done  before,  more  being  made 
and  used  in  public  demonstrations  during  the  season  than  the  total 
amount  that  has  been  produced  since  hydrogen  was  first  liquefied. 
Solid  hydrogen  is  also  produced  by  the  apparatus. 

The  optical  work  of  the  Bureau  is  not  so  fully  established  as 
the  work  in  weights  and  measures,  and  heat  and  thermometry,  but 
three  well-trained  specialists  are  devoting  themselves  to  it  and 
a  fourth  is  soon  to  be  appointed.  The  work  of  research  and 
testing  in  this  section,  which  has  been  taken  up  or  is  soon  to  be 
begun,  includes  the  investigation  of  the  optical  properties  of 
instruments  and  of  materials ;  the  application  of  interference  and 
other  optical  methods  to  linear  and  angular  measurements;  the 
investigation  of  the  spectra  of  vacuum  tubes  and  other  phenomena 
in  connection  with  the  passage  of  electricity  through  gasies  at 
reduced  pressure;  and  the  investigation  of  questions  connected 
with  the  polariscope  analysis  of  sugar  and  the  testing  of  polari- 
scopes. 


192  APPENDIX 

The  latter  subject  is  of  special  importance  on  account  of  the 
use  of  polariscopes  in  determining  the  duty  on  sugar  imported  into 
the  United  States.  The  Bureau  has  undertaken,  at  the  request 
of  the  Treasury  Department,  to  supervise  the  work  of  polar i- 
scopic  analysis  of  sugar  in  all  the  custom  houses  of  the  countr\'. 
Sugar  is  the  chief  source  of  revenue  among  articles  imported,  the 
duties  collected  by  the  Government  amounting  to  over  $6o,cxx),ooo 
per  annum.  The  duty  on  each  importation  is  determined  by  the 
angle  through  which  a  beam  of  polarized  light  is  rotated  when 
passed  through  a  solution  of  a  sample  of  sugar,  the  percentage 
of  pure  sugar  being  shown  by  a  specially  prepared  table  when  the 
angle  of  rotation  has  been  determined.  For  some  years  a  differ- 
ence has  existed  between  the  experts  of  the  government  and  those 
employed  by  the  sugar  interest  as  to  the  effect  of  temperature 
upon  the  indications  of  the  polariscope,  and,  although  the  differ- 
ence is  only  a  fraction  of  one  per  cent,  it  amounts  to  a  large  sum 
when  applied  to  the  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars  paid  in  duty 
during  the  last  few  years.  The  question  is  being  contested  in  the 
courts,  and  in  the  meantime  the  Bureau  is  making  some  careful 
investigations  on  the  subject  in  the  interest  of  the  government. 

Another  line  of  the  Bureau's  work  not  yet  fully  established  is 
the  testing  of  gas  and  water  meters,  pressure  gauges  and  manom- 
eters for  high  and  low  pressures,  engine  indicators,  and  the  deter- 
mination of  the  strengths  of  materials,  including  cements  and 
other  building  materials.  This  will  probably  develop  into  a  very 
important  branch  of  our  work,  in  which  we  can  be  of  much  ser- 
vice to  scientific  and  technical  laboratories,  as  well  as  to  the 
government  and  the  public. 

The  official  testing  of  scales,  measures  of  length  and  volume, 
gas,  water  and  electricity  meters,  and  other  instruments  by  which 
the  commodities  purchased  by  the  people  are  measured,  is  not 
done  in  this  country  as  thoroughly  as  it  ought  to  be.  In  very  few 
cities  do  the  sealers  of  weights  and  measures  go  about  systematic- 
ally testing  the  instruments  employed  for  measuring  merchandise. 
England  surpasses  us  in  looking  after  the  interests  of  the  people 
in  this  particular.  One  of  the  functions  of  the  Bureau  is  to 
educate  the  public  to  the  importance  of  this  work.  A  step  in 
this  direction  is  the  National  Convention  of  Sealers  of  Weights 
and  Measures  to  meet  next  month  in  Washington,  in  response 
to  a  call  issued  by  the  Bureau  of  Standards. 


APPENDIX  193 

The  various  lines  of  testing  and  research  which  so  far  have 
been  mentioned,  namely,  weights  and  measures,  heat  and  ther- 
mometry, light  and  optical  instruments,  and  engineering  instru- 
ments, are  included  in  the  first  division  of  the  work  of  the  Bureau 
of  Standards.  The  second  division  includes  electricity  and  pho- 
tometry. In  the  early  days  of  its  development  electricity  was 
essentially  a  qualitative  science;  its  modern  history  has  seen  it 
become  distinctly  quantitative,  and  its  wonderful  development 
has  been  largely,  if  not  mainly,  due  to  the  use  of  measuring 
instruments  in  studying  and  applying  it.  The  three  fundamental 
units  of  measure  are  the  ohm,  the  unit  of  resistance ;  the  ampere, 
the  unit  of  current ;  and  the  volt,  the  unit  of  electromotive  force. 
These  are  so  related  by  Ohm's  law  that  when  two  are  defined  the 
third  becomes  fixed  and  can  be  determined  by  the  use  of  the  other 
two.  These  units  are  not  arbitrarily  chosen,  but  are  determined 
by  experimental  investigation.  Their  magnitudes  depend  upon 
the  fundamental  units  of  length,  mass  and  time,  and  these  having 
been  selected  (namely,  the  centimeter,  gram  and  second),  the 
definitions  or  specifications  of  the  electric  units  follow  logically, 
but  their  concrete  expression  in  actual  standards  that  can  be 
employed  in  electrical  measurements  can  only  be  attained  after 
most  painstaking  researches  in  what  are  called  absolute  measure- 
ments. The  two  of  these  three  units  which  have  been  so  deter- 
mined are  the  ohm  and  the  ampere.  As  all  other  electrical  units 
are  based  upon  these,  it  is  of  the  greatest  importance  that  they  be 
determined  with  the  utmost  exactness.  At  the  International  Elec- 
trical Congress  at  Chicago,  in  1893,  they  were  redefined  in  accord- 
ance with  the  results  of  the  best  determinations  made  up  to  that 
time.  The  ohm  is  specified  in  terms  of  the  resistance  of  a  column 
of  mercury  106.3  cm.  long,  having  a  cross  section  of  one  square 
millimeter ;  the  ampere  in  terms  of  the  quantity  of  pure  silver  it 
will  deposit  electrolytically  per  second  from  a  solution;  the  volt 
in  terms  of  the  electromotive  force  of  the  standard  Clark  cell.  An 
immense  amount  of  work  has  been  done  by  investigators  in 
various  countries  of  the  world  in  the  determination  of  the  values 
of  these  units,  and  the  figures  adopted  in  the  definitions  undoubt- 
edly come  very  near  the  truth.  Nevertheless,  we  know  from  sub- 
sequent work  that  at  least  two  of  these  units  are  very  slightly  in 
error,  and  one  of  the  most  important  problems  before  the  Bureau 
of  Standards  is  the  redetermination  of  these  fundamental  units. 

13  .^tT  ■%■!.  ^ 


194  APPENDIX 

The  quantity  in  question  is  small,  so  small  as  to  be  of  no  conse- 
quence in  engineering  and  commercial  work.  But  scientifically 
it  is  important,  and  as  instruments  and  methods  are  improved,  as 
they  are  year  by  year,  any  small  discrepancies  in  our  fundamental 
units  become  of  more  and  more  significance.  The  National  Physi- 
cal Laboratory  of  England  and  the  Physikalisch-Technische 
Reichsanstalt  of  Germany,  as  well  as  a  few  private  investigators  in 
this  country  and  abroad,  are  all  working  in  the  same  direction. 
The  difficulties  to  be  overcome  are  so  great  that  only  the  most 
elaborate  researches  carried  out  under  the  most  favorable  circum- 
stances can  be  expected  to  bring  us  appreciably  nearer  the  desired 
goal.  Two  researches  at  the  Bureau  of  Standards  during  the  past 
year  gave  results  of  value  preparatory  to  the  redetermination 
of  the  ampere  in  absolute  measure.  One  was  by  Dr.  Wolff  show- 
ing how  to  overcome  one  of  the  defects  of  the  standard  cell;  a 
new  method  of  preparing  the  mercurous  sulphate  yielding  a  crys- 
talline product  which  gives  cells  of  more  uniform  electromotive 
force  than  formerly.  Prof.  Carhart  of  Ann  Arbor,  who  has  been 
engaged  upon  this  subject  for  some  time,  arrived  independently 
at  the  same  result  even  earlier,  the  results  being  announced  by 
both  men  at  the  same  meeting  in  Washington  in  April  last.  The 
other  investigation  was  by  Dr.  Guthe,  who,  after  carefully  study- 
ing all  the  various  forms  of  silver  voltameters  which  have  been 
proposed,  showed  that,  although  different  kinds  gave  slightly 
different  results,  certain  ones,  when  properly  handled,  gave  prac- 
tically identical  results,  and  hence  could  be  depended  upon  for 
measuring  current  to  a  very  high  order  of  accuracy.  Dr.  Wolff 
is  continuing  his  work  on  standard  cells,  and  Dr.  Guthe  is  now 
engaged  on  the  absolute  measurement  of  current,  by  means  of  a 
new  electro  dynamometer. 

I  have  been  engaged,  with  the  assistance  of  Mr.  Grover,  Mr. 
Durston  and  several  .other  members  of  the  Bureau,  in  the  absolute 
measurements  of  electric  capacity  and  inductance,  and  in  the 
investigation  of  electrical  measuring  instruments,  more  especially 
for  the  precise  measurement  of  alternating  currents,  voltage  and 
energy.  These  investigations  have  involved  the  construction  of 
much  new  apparatus,  as  well  as  the  thorough  study  of  some  well- 
known  instruments.  One  of  the  practical  problems  in  connection 
with  the  accurate  measurement  of  capacity  or  inductance  is  the 
determination  of  the  frequency  of  the  interrupter  or  of  the  alter- 


APPENDIX  195 

nating  current  employed.  This  usually  amounts  to  obtaining  the 
speed  of  some  kind  of  motor,  often  an  electric  motor.  For  some 
kinds  of  work,  to  be  within  one  per  cent,  is  considered  sufficiently 
accurate.  For  other  cases  one-tenth  of  one  per  cent,  is  none  too 
good.  In  still  others  one-hundredth  of  one  per  cent,  is  deemed 
necessary.  In  this  work  we  sought  to  get  the  frequency  to  a 
thousandth  part  of  one  per  cent.  This  required  a  very  perfect 
control  of  the  speed,  and  yet  by  attention  to  all  the  sources  of 
disturbance,  and  by  the  use  of  a  very  sensitive  indicator,  the 
desired  result  was  obtained  and  an  important  additional  step  taken 
in  absolute  measurements. 

Many  other  interesting  and  important  questions  are  bciing 
investigated,  and  work  enough  for  years  is  already  before  us. 
These  particular  examples  of  the  work  at  the  Bureau  have  been 
cited,  not  because  I  presume  that  you  are  especially  interested  in 
the  problems  themselves,  but  rather  to  illustrate  the  kind  of 
research  work  we  are  doing. 

The  work  of  testing  is  being  carried  on  simultaneously. 
Resistance  standards,  current  standards,  standard  cells.  Wheat- 
stone  bridges,  potentiometers,  magnetic  instruments,  current 
instruments,  voltmeters,  wattmeters,  condensers,  inductances,  and 
many  other  electrical  instruments  have  come  to  us  from  manufac- 
turers, universities,  technical  laboratories  and  departments  of  the 
national  government.  To  be  able  to  get  reliable  standards  and  to 
have  instruments  calibrated  at  a  nominal  cost  is  a  boon  to  all  care- 
ful experimentalists.  Heretofore  it  has  often  happened  that  the 
burden  of  the  work  in  a  given  investigation  has  been  to  calibrate 
the  instruments  employed,  and  often  the  facilities  at  command 
were  insufficient  to  yield  results  of  high  accuracy.  Within  the  last 
three  years  (that  is,  since  the  Bureau  has  been  testing  instru- 
ments), there  has  been  a  marked  improvement  in  the  quality  of 
some  kinds  of  electrical  instruments  made  in  this  country.  It  is 
now  so  easy  to  determine  whether  a  resistance  box  guaranteed 
by  the  maker  to  be  correct  to  1-50  of  one  per  cent,  fulfills  the 
guarantee,  that  the  maker  is  compelled  to  use  correct  standards 
and  to  adjust  his  resistances  carefully  in  accordance  with  the 
same. 

Probably  the  most  interesting  collection  at  the  St.  Louis  Expo- 
sition from  the  standpoint  of  physical  science  was  the  magnificent 
exhibit  of  scientific  instruments  made  in  Germany.    There  was  a 


196  APPENDIX 

time  not  so  very  long  ago  when  France  and  England  surpassed 
Germany  in  the  production  of  scientific  instruments.  But  Ger- 
many, by  the  giant  strides  which  it  has  made  in  the  last  twenty 
years,  has  left  other  countries  in  the  rear,  and  this  wonderful  pro- 
gress has  been  largely  due  to  the  wise  encouragement  and  assist- 
ance offered  to  instrument-makers  by  the  German  government. 
This  assistance  has  taken  various  forms,  but  the  principal  factor 
has  probably  been  the  work  of  the  Reichsanstalt  and  the  Normal 
Aichungs  Kommission,  the  two  government  laboratories  doing 
the  work  which  the  Bureau  of  Standards  aims  to  do  in  the  United 
States.  They  have  set  a  high  standard  for  scientific  instruments 
and  have  not  only  shown  how  defects  could  be  corrected,  but  have 
developed  the  theory  and  the  design  of  many  new  instruments. 
All  this  has  occurred  so  recently  that  it  is  not  generally  known  in 
the  United  States,  and  German  instruments  are  not  as  largely  used 
as  they  deserve  to  be.  We  hope  that  the  next  few  years  may  wit- 
ness a  similar  impetus  in  the  production  of  scientific  instruments 
in  this  country,  and  that  the  United  States  may  come  to  hold  the 
same  enviable  position,  with  respect  to  scientific  instruments  in 
general,  that  she  now  does  with  respect  to  tools  and  labor-saving 
machinery,  and  to  certain  special  classes  of  scientific  instruments. 
The  advantage  of  having  instruments  and  standards  of  high 
accuracy  for  engineering  and  research  work  is  obvious  and  needs 
no  proof.  I  wish,  however,  to  point  out  the  advantage  of  using 
such  instruments  as  far  as  practicable  for  purposes  of  instruc- 
tion, especially  in  the  more  advanced  laboratory  courses.  If  the 
apparatus  is  not  accurately  adjusted,  the  careful  student,  and  per- 
haps his  instructor  as  well,  are  prone  to  lose  valuable  time  in  try- 
ing to  locate  errors  that  are  inherent  in  the  apparatus,  or  in 
striving  for  a  degree  of  accuracy  which  is  unattainable  with  the 
instruments  employed.  On  the  other  hand,  when  the  apparatus  is 
known  not  to  be  correct,  it  is  so  easy  to  attribute  to  the  instruments 
any  discrepancies  in  the  results  that  careless  reading  and  hasty 
work  may  possibly  be  encouraged.  It  is  a  great  delight  to  the  real 
lover  of  quantitative  experimental  work,  of  whom  a  great  many 
are  to  be  found  in  almost  any  college  class,  to  do  a  piece  of  work 
with  precision  instruments  and  obtain  an  accurate  result,  duly 
checked  by  proper  variations  of  the  experiment.  The  educa- 
tional value  of  such  work  is  certainly  greater  than  when  only 
roughly  done;   the  pleasure  derived  is  incomparably  greater.    It 


APPENDIX  197 

is  by  no  means  necessary  that  all  the  instruments  of  a  laboratory 
be  sent  away  to  be  tested.  If  only  the  laboratory  possesses  cor- 
rect standards  and  suitable  comparing  apparatus,  the  calibration 
or  adjustment  of  most  of  the  other  instruments  furnishes  excel- 
lent experimental  work  for  the  students  and  assistants  of  the 
laboratory. 

Another  important  section  of  the  work  of  the  Bureau  is  pho- 
tometry. This  is  really  optical  rather  than  electrical,  but  owing 
to  the  fact  that  the  chief  work  is  with  electric  lamps  and  a  very 
considerable  electrical  equipment  is  required,  it  is  grouped  with 
the  electrical  work  in  our  organization.  The  standards  employed 
in  photometric  testing  are  less  satisfactory  than  in  most  other 
branches  of  physical  measurements.  The  quantity  of  light  emitted 
by  a  given  source  is  usually  expressed  in  candle  power ;  the  ordin- 
ary incandescent  electric  lamp,  being  approximately  equivalent 
to  sixteen  standard  candles,  is  called  a  16  candle  power  lamp.  The 
candle  as  a  standard  of  measure  has  passed  out  of  vogue,  but 
light  is  still  expressed  in  candle  power.  Various  sources  of  light 
have  been  proposed  as  standard,  the  Hefner  lamp,  burning 
amylacetate,  being  most  used  as  a  primary  standard.  As  working 
standards  specially  prepared,  incandescent  lamps  are  generally 
used,  and  are  quite  satisfactory.  Greater  progress  has  been  made 
in  recent  years  in  developing  photometers  and  the  auxiliary  appar- 
atus for  comparing  lamps  than  in  perfecting  a  primary  standard 
of  illumination.  Although  the  initial  equipment  of  the  Bureau 
for  this  work  is  not  yet  complete,  we  have  already  done  con- 
siderable testing,  especially  in  rating  lamps  purchased  to  be  used 
as  standards  by  manufacturers  and  others,  and  in  testing  lamps 
purchased  by  the  various  departments  of  the  Government.  Mil- 
lions of  incandescent  lamps  are  sold  each  year  on  carefully  drawn 
specifications,  and  it  is  a  matter  of  considerable  importance  to 
know  whether  the  conditions  of  the  contracts  are  met  by  the 
manufacturers. 

In  addition  to  the  exhibit  made  by  the  Bureau  of  Standards 
in  the  Government  building  at  the  St.  Louis  Exposition,  an  elec- 
trical laboratory  was  equipped  and  maintained  in  the  Electricity 
building.  This  was  done  at  the  request  of  the  Exposition  man- 
agement, the  object  being  two- fold ;  first  to  exhibit  a  working 
electrical  laboratory  and,  second,  to  do  electrical  testing  for  the 
Jury  of  Awards,  for  the  Railway  Test  Commission,  and  other 


198  APPENDIX 

electrical  interests  at  the  Fair.  The  laboratory  building,  which 
was  within  the  Palace  of  Electricity,  and  extended  along  one 
of  its  walls  for  a  distance  of  about  175  feet,  was  divided  into  six 
rooms.  Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  it  was  a  temporary  struc- 
ture, the  laboratory  possessed  many  of  the  appointments  of  a 
permanent  installation ;  and,  although  many  disadvantages  and 
limitations  were  experienced  in  doing  scientific  work  amid  such 
surroundings,  we  succeeded  in  doing  a  good  deal  of  satisfactory 
work,  including  both  research  and  testing.  So  complete  a  lab- 
oratory has  never  been  installed  in  any  previous  World's  Fair, 
and  it  proved  to  be  of  considerable  interest  both  to  visitors  and  to 
those  electrical  interests  which  availed  themselves  of  its  facilities 
for  testing  instruments.  A  refrigerating  machine,  installed  adja- 
cent to  the  laboratory  as  an  exhibit,  furnished  refrigeration  for 
experimental  purposes  and  also  for  controlling  the  temperature 
and  reducing  the  humidity  of  the  atmosphere  within  the  labora- 
tory. This  proved  not  only  a  great  convenience  in  doing  experi- 
mental work,  but  also  a  comfort  to  the  workers,  and  the  cool  office 
of  the  Bureau  was  a  favorite  retreat  for  the  Electrical  Jury  in  the 
hottest  days  of  the  jury  period. 

The  third  division  of  the  work  of  the  Bureau  is  the  Chemical 
division,  in  charge  of  Professor  W.  A.  Noyes.  The  development 
of  this  work  has  waited  on  the  completion  of  our  laboratory  build- 
ings. The  installation  of  the  equipment  of  the  chemical  labora- 
tory is,  however,  now  in  progress,  and  chemical  work  will  be 
well  under  way  before  the  end  of  the  present  fiscal  year.  The 
work  in  chemistry  will  consist,  first,  in  cooperating  in  certain 
lines  of  physical  research  and,  second,  in  serving  the  chemical 
interests  of  the  country.  This  will  be  done  partly  by  research  and 
partly  by  testing. 

The  Bureau  has  already  done  considerable  testing  of  apparatus 
used  in  volumetric  analysis.  The  American  Chemical  Society, 
through  its  committee,  has  been  cooperating  with  the  Bureau  in 
fixing  the  limits  of  tolerance  for  such  apparatus  and  in  defining 
the  specifications  to  be  followed  by  the  manufacturers.  Another 
committee  of  the  American  Chemical  Society  has  proposed  a 
plan  whereby  standards  of  purity  of  chemical  reagents  shall  be 
set,  after  careful  investigation  of  the  subject,  and  specific  labels 
selected  to  indicate  definite  degrees  of  purity  of  such  reagents. 
The  Bureau  of  Standards,  according  to  this  plan,  is  to  cooperate 


APPENDIX  199 

with  the  Society  in  securing  conformity  to  these  standards  on  the 
part  of  manufacturers.  I  will  not  undertake  to  give  details  of  the 
proposition;  the  work  is  of  great  importance  and  promises  to 
bring  the  Bureau  of  Standards  into  close  connection  with  the 
manufacturing  and  analytical  chemists  of  the  country.  Another 
subject  in  which  the  Bureau  has  been  invited  to  cooperate  with 
the  American  Chemical  Society  is  in  the  matter  of  securing  uni- 
formity in  technical  analyses.  Too  great  discrepancies  are  found 
in  the  results  obtained  by  different  public  and  other  chemists 
when  analyzing  proportions  of  the  same  sample.  This  is  largely 
due  to  the  different  methods  of  analysis.  It  is  proposed  to  inves- 
tigate thoroughly  the  various  methods  employed,  and  to  select 
certain  of  the  best  reagents,  in  order  that  the  results  found  by 
different  analyses  may  be  more  concordant  and  more  accurate. 
Other  lines  of  research  and  testing  are  contemplated,  and  will  be 
undertaken  as  the  facilities  permit. 

The  field  of  chemistry,  as  well  as  physics,  has  so  expanded  in 
recent  years  that  the  two  now  overlap  over  large  areas.  Indeed, 
it  is  often  impossible  to  say  that  a  given  problem  belongs  to  one 
or  the  other,  the  fact  being  that  it  pertains  to  both  fields.  Hence, 
the  physicist  frequently  comes  to  the  point  where  he  needs  the 
resources  of  a  chemical  laboratory  to  carry  him  through  a  prob- 
lem supposed  to  be  purely  physical,  and  conversely  the  chemist, 
not  only  in  electro-chemistry  and  physical  chemistry,  but  in 
analytical  chemistry  as  well,  requires  very  many  of  the  facilities 
of  a  well  equipped  physical  laboratory.  Hence  we  have  so  planned 
our  laboratories  that  all  the  facilities  of  the  entire  equipment  may 
be  brought  into  service  on  any  problem,  whether  it  originates  on 
the  physical  side  or  on  the  chemical.  This,  we  believe,  will  prove 
of  great  advantage  to  the  work  of  the  Bureau. 

There  are  three  chemists  in  the  chemical  division  at  present, 
and  the  number  will  be  increased  as  the  work  develops. 

It  is  the  aim  of  the  Bureau  not  only  to  conduct  investigations 
through  its  members,  but  also  to  afford  facilities  for  research  by 
others  who  may  come  as  scientific  guests.  It  often  happens  that 
a  proposed  investigation  requires  apparatus  or  other  facilities 
not  at  the  command  of  the  person  proposing  the  investigation, 
and  no  university  can  perhaps  offer  him  the  necessary  facilities 
and  assistance.  The  Bureau  of  Standards  hopes  to  encourage 
investigation  by  providing  such  facilities  and  assistance,  but  can 


20O  APPENDIX 

do  so  only  to  a  limited  degree  until  the  laboratory  space  is 
increased  by  additional  buildings.  There  are  scores  and  perhaps 
hundreds  of  ambitious  physicists,  young  and  old,  engaged  in 
teaching  in  the  colleges  and  technical  schools  of  the  country  who 
are  deterred  from  doing  valuable  research  work  by  lack  of  facil- 
ities and  assistance.  It  is  believed  that  a  generous  policy  of  assist- 
ance through  the  Bureau  of  Standards  will  be  greatly  appreciated 
by  such  workers,,  and  that  the  output  of  original  research  from 
America  will  be  materially  increased  thereby.  A  summer's  work 
under  favorable  circumstances  might  yield  as  much  as  a  full  year's 
effort  under  adverse  conditions,  and  a  year,  enough  to  amply 
repay  the  sacrifice  it  might  involve.  But,  as  I  have  already  said, 
the  full  realization  of  this  plan  lies  in  the  future.  For  the  pres- 
ent all  our  laboratory  space  is  required  to  meet  our  own  pressing 
needs,  although  we  do  have  just  now  one  scientific  guest  with  us, 
about  to  begin  some  interesting  investigations. 

I  have  tried  to  show  briefly  some  of  the  work  which  the  Bureau 
of  Standards  is  doing  and  is  preparing  to  do,  to  fulfill  its  functions 
aCs  the  American  National  Physical  Laboratory,  using  the  word 
physical  in  a  liberal  sense  as  its  work  includes  both  chemistry  and 
engineering.  The  national  government  is  doing  a  large  amount 
of  scientific  work  through  the  various  Bureaus  and  Departments. 
That  money  expended  in  this  direction  is  well  invested,  the  Depart- 
ment of  Agriculture,  the  Coast  and  Geodetic  Survey,  the  Geolog- 
ical Survey,  and  other  Bureaus,  have  already  abundantly  proved. 
Their  function  and  ours  is  to  contribute  something  to  the  advance- 
ment of  human  knowledge  and  to  serve  the  public.  We  hope  not 
only  to  be  of  service  to  scientific  and  technical  laboratories  in  the 
various  ways  I  have  tried  to  explain,  but  also  to  serve  in  many 
ways  the  larger  general  public. 

It  is  a  peculiar  pleasure  to  me  to  be  present  to-day  at  the  open- 
ing of  the  John  Bell  Scott  Physical  Laboratory.  It  is  a  beautiful 
building,  a  fit  representative  of  the  splendid  science  to  which  it  is 
dedicated;  a  notable  addition  to  the  equipment  of  Wesleyan, 
testifying  eloquently  to  the  generosity  and  loyalty  of  the  donors ; 
a  worthy  memorial  to  the  unselfish  life  of  the  noble  young  man 
after  whom  it  is  named.  The  good  it  will  do  in  the  future  years 
is  immeasurable. 


ADDRESS 
By  H.  C.  M.  Ingraham,  LL.D. 

ON  the  29th  day  of  June,  1903,  the  corner-stone  of  this 
Memorial  was  laid  with  joyous  hope,  but  with  some  anxi- 
ety, for  then  it  was  not  known  just  what  would  be  the  result  of 
the  work  which  was  to  follow.  To-day,  however,  as  we  gather 
to  dedicate  this  laboratory,  a  completed  building,  its  commanding 
beauty  recognized  by  all  who  behold  it,  and  its  ample  and  appro- 
priate appointments  approved  by  those  who  are  best  able  to  judge 
of  its  adaptation  to  its  intended  use,  the  anxiety  of  1903  has  been 
swallowed  up  in  satisfaction  and  gratitude. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  recount  all  that  has  contributed  to  the 
successful  completion  of  this  work:  the  talent,  the  genius,  the 
efficiency  and  good  taste  of  Mr.  Charles  A.  Rich,  the  architect; 
the  faithfulness  and  competency  of  Mr.  William  Mylchreest,  the 
contractor;  the  sleepless  solicitude  of  Professor  Crawford  and 
his  associate.  Professor  Cady;  the  helpful  counsel  of  Professor 
Rosa;  the  watchfulness  of  Dr.  Raymond,  both  in  his  relation  to 
the  work  as  one  of  the  Building  Committee  and  as  President  of 
the  University;  the  deep  interest  with  which  Mr.  Samuel  T. 
Camp,  while  living,  watched  over  the  development  of  this  struc- 
ture, ever  manifesting  that  loving  solicitude  which  a  mother  has 
for  her  growing  boy;  and  the  open-handed  liberality  of  Mr. 
Charles  Scott  and  his  son,  Charles,  in  providing  the  wherewithal 
necessary  for  its  accomplishment. 

Fifty  years  ago  the  college  developed  the  physician  and  the 
lawyer,  the  teacher  and  the  preacher,  and  through  them  chiefly 
made  its  influence  felt  by  the  people.  To-day  it  is  still  exerting 
an  important  and  wide  influence  upon  the  masses  of  men  through 
these  learned  professions.  This,  doubtless,  is  yet  its  most  import- 
ant work. 

But  the  scope  of  college  influence  has  broadened  and  vastly 
increased  within  recent  years.    It  was  fifty  years  ago  that  Emer- 


202  APPENDIX 

son  said  that  "The  college  is  not  so  wise  as  the  mechanic's  shop" ; 
but  that  cannot  be  said  with  so  much  of  truth  to-day  as  when  it 
was  uttered.  At  present,  college  professors  are  not  only  working 
in  the  earlier  fields  of  study,  the  humanities,  but  they  are  work- 
ing also  in  new  fields,  the  natural  sciences  and  economics.  Now 
the  college  graduate  is  on  the  farm,  in  the  marts  of  trade,  in  the 
laboratories  and  the  machine  shops,  as  well  as  in  courts  and  pul- 
pits. He  is  constructing  bridges  and  railroads,  and  working 
wherever  the  great  industries  of  the  nations  are  being  prosecuted 
with  newly  conquered  and  sublime  forces. 

He  has  been  hunting  out  the  rubbish  heaps — the  debris,  which, 
for  ages,  has  been  cast  to  the  void — and  has  extracted  therefrom 
dyes  which  rival  the  Tyrian  purple,  perfumes  as  fragrant  as  the 
rose,  medicines  more  potent  and  healing  than  any  which  were 
ever  known  before.  He  has  at  last  discovered  the  long  sought 
secret  of  transmuting  these  baser  things  into  gold. 

The  college  has  thus  reached  the  masses  of  mankind  as  never 
before. 

Cadmus,  in  an  age  of  war,  sowed  the  fields  with  dragon's 
teeth,  and  a  harvest  of  armed  men  came  forth.  The  college  grad- 
uate in  these  days  of  peace  and  plenty  sows  his  fields  with  bacteria 
and,  lo,  they  are  burdened  with  the  harvests  of  food  for  beasts 
and  man! 

In  earlier  times  the  college  graduate  was  often  a  prophet.  He 
climbed  the  mountains  and  brought  down,  like  Moses,  divine 
messages;  and  this  he  does  still.  But  with  him  now  goes  his 
college  classmate,  who  fastens  a  wire  to  a  mountain  torrent  and 
brings  down  the  wire  to  some  city ;  and  workmen  in  the  machine 
shops  stand  aside  and  see  this  power  of  the  mountain,  in  some 
wonderful  way,  doing  their  former  work,  while  they  move  up  to 
higher  things ;  and  see  the  streets  which  were  as  dark  by  night 
as  the  deep  pathways  of  the  cataract,  now  as  light  as  the  day. 

All  industrial  pursuits  are  being  transformed  by  the  aid  of 
the  college,  and  the  manual  laborer  is  being  elevated  to  work 
requiring  more  of  skill,  and  is  receiving  therefor  more  wages  for 
fewer  hours  of  service. 

Whatever  there  is  of  ethical  and  intellectual  and  moral  stim- 
ulus acquired  by  the  student  in  college  is  now  being  felt  and 
imparted  in  some  degree  to  the  wage-earners  through  these  new 
associations.  Their  privileges  and  comforts  of  life  have  been  mul- 
tiplied, health  increased,  and  life  prolonged. 


APPENDIX  203 

To-day  it  is  from  the  schools  that  the  mechanics'  shops  are 
getting  their  wisdom. 

The  mysteries  and  riches  of  nature  seem  inexhaustible.  Two 
hundred  years  ago  Pope  wrote  that  brilliant  but  poetic  epitaph 
for  Sir  Isaac  Newton: — 

"Nature  and  nature's  laws  lay  hid  in  night: 
God  said,  *Let  Newton  be,'  and  all  was  light." 

But  this  was  not  quite  true.  Newton's  theory  of  light  is  too  cor- 
puscular for  these  times,  and  in  the  last  two  hundred  years  the 
starlike  eyes  of  science  have  peered  through  darkness,  and  realms 
of  nature,  and  nature's  laws,  which  Newton  never  revealed,  have 
been  brought  to  light.  Newton  would  not  have  claimed  so  much 
for  himself  as  did  the  poet.  He  thought  that  he  had  but  gathered 
a  few  pebbles  upon  the  ocean's  shore. 

The  provisions  now  made  by  colleges  to  enlarge  their  influence 
and  reach  the  masses  of  the  people  have  called  for  vastly  larger 
properties  than  was  required  for  the  work  of  earlier  times,  and 
students,  unaided,  cannot  equip  and  sustain  such  institutions. 
Tuition  fees  will  not  even  support  them  after  they  are  founded. 
The  masses  of  the  people,  those  whom  we  call  common  people, 
cannot  of  themselves  build  up  and  sustain  colleges.  They  must  be 
established  and  sustained  by  the  State  or  by  the  gifts  of  others — 
by  men  who  love  their  fellow  men  and  want  the  future  to  sur- 
pass the  present.  He  that  "hath  this  world's  goods  and  beholdeth 
his  brother  in  need"  can  do  it.  It  is  his  supreme  privilege  to  do 
it ;  and  if  he  does  not  do  it,  either  voluntarily  or  through  the  State, 
it  cannot  be  done  at  all.  Many  men  in  the  midst  of  their  life's 
work  have  recognized  this  growing  need  of  the  people  and  have 
done  much  towards  meeting  it. 

This  has  been  true  in  regard  to  our  own  college  more  than  once, 
and  recently  Mr.  Charles  Scott,  Sr.,  and  Mr.  Charles  Scott,  Jr., 
have  caused  this  building  to  come  into  being. 

The  people  must,  sooner  or  later,  know  that  these  gifts  to  col- 
leges must  work  for  their  benefit,  and  it  is  but  natural  that  they 
should  respond  w^ith  gratitude  to  their  benefactors.  Indeed,  it 
may  be  hoped  that  these  generous  gifts  by  those  who  have,  for 
the  good  of  those  who  have  not,  will  tend  to  ameliorate  the  blind 
and  disastrous  struggle  that  exists  in  these  times  between  the 
workman  and  his  employer — the  poor  and  the  rich. 


204  APPENDIX 

This  building,  which  we  now  dedicate,  is  to  be  a  perpetual 
memorial  to  a  noble  young  man,  one  who  sacrificed  his  life  in 
sympathy  and  cooperation  with  the  most  unselfish,  altruistic  and 
beneficent  war  that  a  great  nation  ever  waged.  But  it  is  more 
than  a  memorial.  It  is  a  valuable  addition  to  the  usefulness  of 
this  University,  and  it  will  be  a  help  to  the  people,  far  and  wide, 
as  to  their  creature  comforts. 

And  now  this  building,  which  Mr.  Scott,  Sr.,  never  saw,  has 
become  not  only  a  memorial  of  his  deceased  son,  but  a  monument 
to  himself.  In  the  dead  of  night,  before  the  light  of  morning  had 
ushered  in  our  last  Thanksgiving  Day,  Mr.  Scott  heard  the  call 
to  come  up  higher  and  join  the  company  of  father  and  mother, 
wife  and  son,  and  other  dear  ones,  and  his  ascended  Lord,  and 
experience  his  first  day  of  thanksgiving  in  that  city  whose  builder 
and  maker  is  God. 

The  ancients  had  an  adage  on  this  wise,  "Nothing  but  good  of 
the  dead."  This  rule  is  no  restraint  upon  us  in  speaking  of  Mr. 
Scott. 

Seventy-six  years  ago  he  was  born  in  the  north  of  Ireland,  and 
his  surname  harks  back  to'  Scotch  ancestors.  In  1830  his  par- 
ents moved  to  Philadelphia,  and  from  that  time  till  his  death  he 
was  a  resident  of  that  goodly  city.  His  father  was  never  a  man  of 
property  and  he  died  when  his  son  was  very  young,  and  Mr. 
Charles  Scott  early  felt  the  pressure  of  necessity.  His  eighteenth 
year  was  big  with  destiny  for  him.  In  that  year  he  began  his 
business  career  as  an  office  boy  in  the  firm  of  William  P.  Wil- 
stack  &  Co.,  then  the  largest  wholesale  establishment  of  its  kind 
in  the  United  States.  When  he  was  twenty-two  years  of  age  he 
became  a  partner  in  that  firm,  and  thereafter  continued  as  such 
partner  till  the  death  of  Mr.  Wilstack,  in  1872.  This  was  the 
Mr.  Wilstack  who  established  the  Art  Gallery  of  Philadelphia, 
with  the  gift  of  over  $3,000,000. 

After  his  partner's  death,  Mr.  Scott  organized  the  firm  of  Scott 
&  Day,  which  continued  as  the  successor  of  the  old  firm  till  1876. 
Following  this,  Mr.  Scott  entered  upon  the  manufacture  of  cer- 
tain patented  car  springs,  and  when  the  business  became  very 
large  he  had  it  incorporated.  It  is  said  that  corporations  have 
no  souls ;  but  he  was  the  soul  of  this  corporation  till  1902,  when 
he  parted  with  his  interest  therein  and  retired  from  business. 
Certainly  fifty-seven  continuous  years  of  business  activity  entitled 
him  to  rest. 


APPENDIX  205 

In  that  eighteenth  year  he  also  became  a  member  of  the  Metho- 
dist Episcopal  Church.  Both  his  parents  had  been  Methodists, 
and  all  his  children  are  now  Methodists.  On  entering  the  church 
he  went  to  work  at  once  in  the  Sunday  School,  and  from  that 
year  till  the  last  year  of  his  life  his  time  and  prayers  and  money 
went  forth  in  ever  increasing  and  earnest  efforts  for  the  temporal 
and  spiritual  welfare  of  the  church.  All  its  institutions  were  dear 
to  him  and  partook  liberally  of  his  bounty.  The  list  of  the  insti- 
tutions which  he  thus  aided  would  be  too  long  to  rehearse  on  this 
occasion.  The  cause  of  the  womout  preacher  especially  appealed 
to  him,  and  on  one  occasion  he  contributed  $15,000  for  its 
advancement. 

But  dearer  to  him  than  all  other  of  the  many  institutions  which 
he  served,  as  I  am  informed,  was  Wesleyan  University,  and  his 
last  large  gift  was  to  this  institution. 

For  twenty- four  continuous  years  he  served  this  college  as  one 
of  its  trustees  and  with  his  gifts. 

Few  men  knew  the  leaders  of  Methodism  so  well  as  Mr.  Scott, 
and  the  place  where  they  saw  him  most  frequently  and  at  his  best 
was  in  his  own  home.  That  home  was  ideal,  and  with  all  its 
charms  and  comforts  was  ever  open  to  them. 

This  man  whom  so  many  of  the  learned  were  constantly  taking 
counsel  from,  was  a  graduate  from  the  school  of  necessity.  He 
was  an  apt  scholar  in  that  school  and  passed  up  into  prosperity. 
He  knew  what  it  was  to  be  employed  and  to  employ,  to  serve  and 
to  be  served,  what  it  was  to  want  and  to  abound.  "Sweet  are  the 
uses  of  adversity,"  but  sweeter  still  have  been  to  many  the  uses 
of  his  prosperity. 

Charles  Dana  was  wont  to  stop  and  remove  his  hat  from  off 
his  head  in  the  presence  of  some  grand  old  elms  near  his  home. 
When  I  see  a  man  standing  for  years  head  and  shoulders  above 
most  of  his  fellows,  in  business  capacity  and  integrity,  in  good 
citizenship,  in  loyalty  and  helpfulness  to  his  church,  in  interest  in 
his  fellow  men  and  the  institutions  that  work  for  their  uplift,  and 
in  devotion  to  his  wife  and  children  and  friends,  making  his  home 
the  abode  of  love  and  sympathy  and  hope  and  contentment,  I 
recognize  him  as  one  of  God's  noblemen,  and  I  revere  him. 

He  has  gone,  but  the  good  that  was  his  has  not  perished  or 
deplarted  from  the  earth;  it  has  descended.  In  the  lives  and 
characters  of  his  children,  who  are  with  us  on  this  occasion,  all  the 


2o6  APPENDIX 

strong  and  admirable  and  helpful  qualities  of  character  which 
made  him  what  he  was  are  manifest  in  full  force  and  virtue. 
There  is  a  legend,  that  on  the  eve  of  the  day  fixed  by  Mellitus, 
first  Bishop  of  London,  for  the  consecration  of  the  Church  of 
St.  Peter,  which  we  call  Westminster  Abbey,  St.  Peter  himself 
came  down  to  earth  and  proceeded  to  that  church.  The  building 
stood  out  clear,  without  darkness  or  shadow.  A  host  of  angels 
descended  and  re-ascended,  with  sweet  odors  and  flaming  candles, 
assisting,  and  the  church  was  dedicated  with  the  usual  solemnities. 
Edric,  a  fisherman,  who  was  fishing  that  night  upon  the  Thames, 
was  the  only  one  who  beheld  the  vision.  When  Bishop  Mellitus 
arrived  the  next  morning  with  anointing  oil  and  the  articles  for 
the  great  dedication,  he  found  infallible  signs  of  St.  Peter's  visit 
and  that  he  himself  had  dedicated  his  own  church. 

"If  aught  of  things  that  here  befall 
Touch  a  spirit  among  things  divine," 

who  can  tell  whether  our  departed  benefactor,  he  who  was  most 
instrumental  in  erecting  this  Memorial,  but  who  had  never  while 
on  earth  beheld  it,  has  not,  with  disembodied  freedom,  visited 
these  consecrated  grounds  and,  Hke  St.  Peter,  who  dedicated  that 
wonderous  Memorial  Abbey  at  Westminster  to  its  sacred  uses, 
anticipated  this  dedication  with  his  own  presence  and  benediction. 

And  now.  President  Raymond,  with  a  thankful  heart  and  deep 
reverence,  on  behalf  of  Mr.  Charles  Scott,  who  has  ceased  from 
his  labors,  but  whose  works  do  follow,  and  of  Mr.  Charles  Scott, 
Jr.,  who  is  happily  in  the  midst  of  his  labors,  but  who  preferred 
that  another  should  perform  this  function,  I  deliver  to  you,  as 
President  of  Wesleyan  University,  the  keys  of  this  noble  gift  and 
commit  to  you  the  care  of  this  University  building. 


ADDRESS 
By  President  Bradford  P.  Raymond,  LL.D. 

I  ACCEPT  this  building  for  the  Board  of  Trustees,  and  join 
with  them  in  this  expression  of  appreciation  of  that  gener- 
osity and  good  will  which  prompted  the  erection  of  this  Memorial 
in  this  place.  Wesleyan  is  almost  too  young  to  have  done  much  in 
the  way  of  memorials.  We  have  been  so  absorbed  in  providing 
for  the  exigencies  of  the  present  and  the  demands  of  the  imme- 
diate future,  that  the  meaning  of  the  past  has  been  crowded  out, 
has  hardly  gotten  itself  above  the  threshold  of  consciousness.  But 
an  institution,  like  an  individual,  never  becomes  fully  aware  of 
itself  nor  of  the  meaning  of  its  life  until  its  past  begins  to  haunt 
it  with  sacred  memories  like  a  real  presence.  It  was  from  this 
hidden  life  that  the  Memorial  Chapel  came.  From  this  hill  went 
forth  the  young,  the  generous,  the  brave,  into  the  conflict  for  the 
life  of  the  nation  in  1861-65.  And  the  names  of  those  that  did 
not  return  are  engraven  in  that  south  window,  deep  red  with  the 
blood  of  their  sacrifice.  As  you  stand  alone  in  its  presence,  when 
it  is  flooded  with  the  glory  of  the  morning  sun,  you  may  easily 
see  the  flame  that  burns,  but  does  not  consume,  easily  hear  the 
voice  that  spake  of  old,  saying:  "Draw  not  nigh  hither:  put  off 
thy  shoes  from  off  thy  feet,  for  the  place  whereon  thou  standest 
is  holy  ground."  It  was  a  national  sentiment  that  prompted  the 
building  of  that  Memorial,  but  that  sentiment  was  perfectly 
consonant  with  the  spirit  of  our  faith,  and  the  memorial  of  sac- 
rifice and  of  war  grew  easily  into  a  temple  of  worship  and  peace. 
And  to  those  of  us  whose  memory  runs  back  a  single  decade,  the 
chapel  takes  on  added  sanctity  because  of  the  tablet  which  com- 
memorates four  decades  of  service  by  Professor  James  C.  Van 
Benschoten.  Our  catalogue  shows  the  names  of  thirteen  men  in 
whose  honor  various  chairs  have  been  named,  some  of  them  by 
generous  donors  who  have  desired  to  perpetuate  the  names  of 
their  friends,  and  some  of  them  upon  the  initiative  of  the  Board 
of  Trustees  in  honor  of  these  benefactors. 


THE   NEW    NORTH    COLLEGE 


,_,      u 


O       O 


The  laying  of  the  corner-stone  of  the  new  dormitory  took  place 
at  2  P.  M.  on  Monday,  March  25,  1907.  Rev.  Henry  Baker,  D.D., 
.'64,  pastor  of  the  First  Methodist  Episcopal  Church  of  Middle- 
town,  offered  prayer.  President  Bradford  P.  Raymond  made  the 
following  remarks: 

ADDRESS 
By  President  Bradford  P.  Raymond,  LL.D. 

A  few  months  ago  we  stood  about  this  place  to  watch  a  smok- 
ing altar,  and  as  we  watched,  it  seemed  not  only  that  the  ancient 
tabernacle  of  a  living  spirit  were  in  the  crematory,  but  also  that 
the  spirit  itself  with  its  ancient  memories  and  hopes,  its  joys  and 
sorrows,  were  being  reduced  to  ashes  and  that  the  fitting  sen- 
tence were  "ashes  to  ashes,  dust  to  dust."  That  experience  is 
often  made  so  vivid  in  our  experiences  and  is  so  universal  that 
we  cannot  but  feel  that  it  has  a  rational  place  in  the  economy  of 
things.  We  could  not  but  think  then  of  what  the  old  building 
had  been,  of  the  life  it  had  sheltered,  the  hopes  it  had  housed,  and 
the  songs  which,  like  an  old  friend,  it  had  heard  sung.  We  stand 
to-day  upon  a  new  platform.  Then  the  cruel  winds  of  a  February 
night  which  was  sinking  into  a  March  morning  chilled  us  like  a 
drenched  garment.  But  the  springtime  is  with  us  to-day.  The 
snow  has  gone.  The  blue- jay  and  the  robins  are  among  the  trees. 
The  shouting  hosannas  of  Palm  Sunday  are  just  behind  us  and 
the  triumphant  diapasons  of  Easter  are  already  in  the  air. 

This  old  corner-stone  connects  us  with  the  past.  Upon  it  rested 
the  walls  of  old  North  College.  It  did  duty  there  like  an  Atlas  for 
80  years.  It  was  the  custodian  of  the  documents  which  the  fathers 
saw  fit  to  send  down  to  us,  and  which  now  go  into  the  archives  of 
the  University,  and  it  is  made  to-day  the  custodian  of  the  docu- 


2  14  APPENDIX 

ments  which  we  commit  to  its  keeping,  to  be  read  when,  and  by 
whom  ?  The  old  corner-stone  is  now  a  new  corner-stone.  It  has 
been  redressed  in  the  modest  and  becoming  fashion  of  a  new  time. 
Many  changes  have  come  over  this  nation  since  it  began  duty 
here  and  set  its  bluff  shoulders  under  the  old  superstructure.  But 
though  the  changes  are  many  and  life  is  ten-fold  more  complex 
than  then,  we  go  out  from  it  along  the  old  structural  lines.  We 
only  vary  from  the  lines  of  the  old  foundation  to  bring  the  new 
structure  into  more  perfect  alignment  with  Judd  Hall,  the  library, 
the  chapel  and  South  College.  And  this  is  the  meaning  of  the  new 
life,  viz. :  a  better  alignment  with  tlie  varied,  complex  and 
tumultuous  activities  of  this  hour.  Science  keeps  us  hard  up 
against  reality,  and  especially  against  that  form  of  reality  which 
presents  itself  in  the  form  of  sequence,  and  under  the  concept  of 
mechanism.  And  with  the  spirit  of  research  that  has  long  char- 
acterized our  laboratories,  we  have  kept  our  scientific  woirk 
growthful  and  vital.  But  there  is  much  new  territory  to  con- 
quer, and  we  must  assuredly  continue  on  the  old  lines. 

The  library  is  an  index  of  all  our  intellectual  activities,  and 
reflects  our  intellectual  interests.  Its  alcoves  show  that  we  have 
not  broken  with  the  past.  It  is  that  continuity  that  steadies  all  our 
experimentation  and  adventures  in  the  present.  It  must  be  pre- 
served. But  the  thoughts  of  men  are  far  more  active  to-day  than 
formerly  with  the  things  of  the  present,  and  with  the  outlook 
to  the  future,  and  far  less  dominated  by  tradition.  And  the 
library  will  show  this  new  dominance.  It  is  a  kind  of  grapho- 
phonic  device  to  make  audible  and  potent  the  thought  of  every 
school  and  of  every  conspicuous  man.  A  new  library  building 
and  a  quarter  of  a  million  of  endowment  are  in  the  future  for  us, 
but  the  future  is  always  becoming  the  present. 

The  college  chapel  was  made  a  war  memorial.  There  are  times 
when  the  man  in  charge  of  a  Catling  gun  and  the  man  with  a 
New  Testament  in  his  hand  may  fittingly  touch  elbows  in  the 
ranks.  The  college  exists  for  all  nations,  but  for  all  nations 
chiefly  by  what  it  can  do  for  this  nation.  The  organization  of 
college  men  in  the  interest  of  civic  and  political  righteousness  has 
already  been  effected.  The  nation  demands  the  service  of  men 
that  will  not  take  bribes,  of  men  of  clear  heads,  pure  hearts  and 
strong  arms,  for  sei-vice  in  all  the  peaceful  activities  of  economic, 
municipal  and  political  life.    And  this  kind  of  service,  if  it  is  to 


APPENDIX  215 

be  incorruptible  and  enduring,  must  spring  from  religon.  That 
spire,  that  chapel  bell,  that  desk  and  organ,  the  crimson  window, 
the  faces  that  look  down  upon  you  all  proclaim,  as  does  every 
stone  in  the  wall,  the  supremacy  of  Jesus  Christ,  his  lordship  over 
this  and  every  nation.  May  the  time  never  come  when  it  shall  be 
fitting  to  build  another  memorial  of  war.  We  must,  however,  build 
forever  in  the  old  lines,  for  the  kingship  of  Jesus  Christ,  through 
the  brotherhood  of  man,  with  all  the  far-reaching  implications 
of  revolution  that  that  sovereign  sway  may  carry  with  it. 

South  College  looks  toward  a  larger  and  more  efficient  admin- 
istrative activity. 

This  new  dormitory  is  to  be  the  home  of  those  in  whose  lives 
the  new  and  larger  ideals  are  to  be  realized.  Successive  gener- 
ations will  come  and  go  here.  The  foundations  are  already  laid, 
and  they  are  deep  and  strong.  The  walls  will  soon  be  up,  and  they 
will  be  lofty  and  imposing.  You  may  already  see  the  windows 
aglow  with  the  lights  that  illuminate  and  glorify  the  old  campus. 
And  as  you  watch  the  play  of  the  shadows  and  hear  the  night 
winds  among  the  elms,  you  feel  the  work  of  a  magic  hope  that 
stirs  the  blood  like  old  wine.  And  if  the  college  build  on  the 
old  lines,  perpetually  adapting  them  to  the  ever  increasing  com- 
plexity of  life's  conditions,  we  shall  send  our  delegates  to  that 
world-conference  of  which  Tennyson  sings: 

"Till  the  war-drum  throbbed  no  longer,  and  the  battle-flags  were  furled 
In  the  Parliament  of  man,  the  Federation  of  the  world." 

A  list  of  articles  placed  in  the  corner-stone  was  read  by  W.  J. 
James,  '83.  Then  the  stone,  which  was  the  original  corner-stone 
used  in  the  construction  of  North  College,  was  laid  by  Cephas  B. 
Rogers,  Esq.,  of  Meriden,  Conn.,  a  trustee  of  the  University. 
The  program  was  concluded  by  the  undergraduates  singing, 
"Come  Raise  the  Song  for  Wesleiana." 

The  new  dormitory  will  be  of  Portland  brown-stone,  practically 
fire-proof,  152  by  483^  feet  in  dimensions,  four  stories  in  height 
above  a  basement,  and  will  cost  about  $125,000.  The  building 
will  contain  one  hundred  and  one  rooms,  arranged  to  satisfy  vary- 
ing demands.  There  will  be  twenty- four  rooms,  each  for  one  stu- 
dent; and  ten  single  rooms,  twenty-three  suites  of  two  rooms, 
and  seven  suites  of  three  rooms,  each  for  two  students.  There 
will  be  lavatories  in  the  basement  and  on  the  third  floor,  supplied 


2i6  APPENDIX 

with  tub  and  shower  baths.  The  floor  construction  is  to  be  of 
reinforced  concrete  throughout,  and  the  stairs  of  iron  and  slate. 
The  building  will  be  heated  by  steam  from  the  central  heating 
plant,  and  all  rooms  will  be  lighted  by  electricity.  All  partitions  in 
the  basement,  corridors  and  stair- wells  are  to  be  of  hollow  terra- 
cotta brick.  The  architects  are  Albro  and  Lindeberg  of  New 
York  City.  A  reproduction  of  a  water  color  drawing  of  the 
building  faces  page  213. 


i 


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